Reimagining Curriculum Studies: A Mosaic of Inclusion 9789811698767, 9789811698774, 9811698767

Citation preview

Donald S. Blumenfeld-Jones

Reimagining Curriculum Studies A Mosaic of Inclusion

Reimagining Curriculum Studies

Donald S. Blumenfeld-Jones

Reimagining Curriculum Studies A Mosaic of Inclusion

Donald S. Blumenfeld-Jones Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College Arizona State University Phoenix, AZ, USA

ISBN 978-981-16-9876-7 ISBN 978-981-16-9877-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9877-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

This book is dedicated to the work and lives of James B. Macdonald and David Purpel. James Macdonald’s work stands as a constant reminder of what constitutes true intellectual integrity, dedicated only to betterment of education and schools for the teachers, children, parents, and society, all of whom live education every day. David Purpel, my doctoral mentor, pursued his work always in the hope of a better world. He remains a constant presence in my life and work, serving to provoke me to work toward an always better ethical world and life. This book is also dedicated to Phyllis Lamhut, who taught me to dance and in whose company I danced for 7 years. She taught me to think in my body as well as my mind and pursue aesthetic ends steeped in that intersection of mind and body in which the body takes the lead: feel, move, act, notice. Her integrity as an artist, a teacher, and thinker informs me to this day. Finally, and centrally, this book is dedicated to my wife, Kathryn Corbeau Blumenfeld-Jones, whose integrity, and seriousness of quest, remains a constant inspiration and whose thought appears in this book at pivotal moments. Her ways remain a constant reminder of what a truly inquiring mind does.

Acknowledgments

Blumenfeld-Jones, D. S. (2012). The illness of our world: An hermeneutic of our field. In Curriculum and the aesthetic life: Hermeneutics, body, democracy, and ethics in curriculum theory and practice (pp. 97–104). Peter Lang. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved. Blumenfeld-Jones, D. S. (2011). Fostering creativity and aesthetic consciousness in teachers: Theory and practice. In Cheryl J. Craig, & Louise F. Deretchin (Eds.), Cultivating curious and creative minds: The role of teachers and teacher educators, part II teacher education yearbook XIX (pp. 22–46). Rowman and Littlefield Education. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved. Blumenfeld-Jones, D. S. (2006). Aesthetic consciousness and dance curriculum: Liberation possibilities in inner-city schools. In Joe L. Kinchloe kecia hayes, Karel Rose, & Philip M. Anderson (Eds.), The Praeger handbook of urban education, volume 2. Greenwood Press. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.

vii

Introduction—Reimagining Curriculum Studies and Ecumenical Restlessness

This introduction presents the architecture of the book through presenting some basic concepts holding the book together. Additionally, the character of the explorations in the book is discussed, grounded in the idea of restlessness.

Dimensions of Reimagining Curriculum Studies The title Reimagining Curriculum Studies: A Mosaic of Inclusion presents two connected dimensions of this book. One dimension is the act of reimagining. To reimagine involves reimagining something that seems already known, for the purpose of finding new dimensions and potentials of that which is reimagined. Critique is considered integral to the reimagining project, such critique revealing hidden or ignored dimensions of the field. As to the structure of the book, the first four chapters involve presenting that critique along with ideas on what needs reimagining and how to simultaneously critique and reimagine the field. The remaining six chapters involve critiques and reimaginings of particular dimensions of the field. These chapters are intended to fulfill two purposes. The first purpose is simply to present acts of critique and reimagining to illuminate the processes presented in the first four chapters. The second purpose is that the topics chosen (imagination, freedom, teaching, identity, and time, along with a reconsideration of the whole project, in the epilogue) are considered by the author to be some of the core issues to the field. As the critiques and reimaginings of these core issues unfold, they bend back upon themselves, collectively, potentially revealing something about the field as a whole. The second dimension in the title, the idea of mosaic of inclusion, covers the book as a whole. Mosaic envisions a project that is a unified image comprised of smaller images (thus, one image of inclusion)—a mosaic linking the “smaller” mosaics (the chapters) that are themselves mosaical in structure and exploration, grounded in the various reimagining practices presented in Chaps. 2 through 4 (mosaical thinking, language as experience, Chap. 2 “Mosaical Thinking and Curriculum Theory,” dialectical unlearning, Chap. 3 “Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom” and wild ix

x

Introduction—Reimagining Curriculum Studies and Ecumenical …

imagination, Chap. 4 “Wild Imagination and the Critical Project”). Mosaical thinking provides a way of understanding the complexity of our processes of understanding through language as experience which is embodied. Dialectical unlearning is offered as a more-or-less permanent state of critical thinking dedicated to constantly rejuvenating the field. Wild imagination is offered as a different way to liberate our minds and actions. Those three chapters are not merely “process” chapters separate from “practice” but include, themselves, mosaical explorations. For, as Tom Barone stated in our conversations over the years, separating method from practice is a false division. This book hopefully fulfills his insight by attempting to avoid that division. The word mosaic is not idiosyncratic. It signals an alternative approach to our scholarship (and, as will be discussed in the Epilogue, a way of living as well) that any of us might be practicing, perhaps unbeknownst to ourselves. I found the idea and practice of mosaical thinking emerging in the early stages of writing this book without my seeking it. It remained central to how I thought about what I was attempting in terms of thinking and presentation as well as central to how I think. It did not feel foreign or strange but a kind of relief at some new self-understanding. Therefore, it seemed of value to provide an elaborated statement of what is meant by it, thus Chap. 2. Additionally, in that chapter, “curriculum theory” is addressed so that the reader understands my orientation toward this central practice. Chapter 3 “Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom” elaborates dialectics (a view of how we encounter the world) and unlearning (a practice of constantly questioning our own conclusions in a dialectical manner) as conjoined groundings for a practice of selfcritique, subjectivity, and criticality. This is a process I have used, without naming it, for many years. The rest of the book, explorations of freedom, imagination, identity, teaching, and time, unfold through practices of mosaical thinking, dialectical unlearning, wild imagination, and curriculum theory while simultaneously speaking back to and elaborating mosaical thinking, dialectical unlearning, wild imagination, and curriculum theory, as well as wrapping around toward each other. To call for the reimagining of Curriculum Studies is not a new event. It has happened many times in the field’s brief history, usually under the guise of critiquing the field. Chapter 1 “The Illness of Our World: A Critique of Curriculum Studies” presents another critique in our history. This critique comes in the form of a set of linked concerns: a narrowing of the field to certain kinds of inquiry and questions, a frozenness in what Heidegger (1977) termed “the age of the world picture,” the exclusion or minimizing of questions of imagination and aesthetics, and balkanization of the field. Chapter 3 “Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom” extends and elaborates the Chap. 1 critique. The word inclusion (discussed in greater detail in Chapter 5, “Freedom All Too Human”) references a greater inclusion of multiple resources and perspectives but also embodies the idea that we need a politics of inclusion, not exclusion and marginalization. There are other dimensions of this book. As already mentioned, the book is meant to be critical in character. What it means to be critical is elaborated in Chap. 3 and then, performed throughout the book. The book is also a set of explorations. To write that the book is a set of explorations means: raising questions, not necessarily answering them, presenting detailed journeys through ideas meant to provoke. But,

Introduction—Reimagining Curriculum Studies and Ecumenical …

xi

not merely for the purpose of provocation. This isn’t a game. As noted in an earlier article (Blumenfeld-Jones, 2016), this work represents a life dedicated to Curriculum Studies. It is not meant to be merely interesting. As noted in the opening chapter, I fear for our field and our world. I fear we will be too late to begin to re-make this world in ways that draw us together in the one world we really are. Freedom is a recurrent theme that informs the book as a whole, playing a central role as one of the grounds of the mosaics being explored. Indeed, Chap. 4 “Wild Imagination and the Critical Project” might well have been labeled “free imagination,” the freeing of the imagination to wander where it will in service of finding new and often surprising connections to what were previously either unseen or outrightly rejected ideas and entities in the world. Chapter 5 “Freedom All Too Human” is entirely focused on reimagining freedom. Chapter 6 “Pure Imagination and Freedom” is dedicated to an imagination freed of particularist, pre-determined values as well as presenting curricular structures that we might employ for the cultivation of imagination. Chapter 7 “Creativity and Aesthetic Consciousness in Teacher Education” focuses on freeing teacher education from being only connected to the demands of schools but, rather, helping teachers explore themselves and their potentials in new domains. Chapter 8 “Identity, Self, and Liberation” is a meditation on the difficulties of the identity/self dialectic imbricated within the study of a middle school dance program that worked to free those young people from demands of a particularist, almost ideological view of identity, offering them a free exploration of possibilities unavailable if they consider their lives only as expressions of their communities. Chapter 9 “Reimagining Time” addresses freedom from the constraints of conventional views of time, making room (ironically a spatial image for a temporal fact) for the free wandering of the self through the elastic, flexible life in time that is not tied to recalcitrant temporal beats. In short, freedom is at the heart of this book, in conjunction with imagination. Imagination is the passion of this book. Imagination is how I have lived my life. I recall being with my wife, Kathryn Blumenfeld-Jones, at the Berenty Forest Reserve in Madagascar in October 2006. I was acting as her field assistant in gathering her data about the state of the forest, which we did for a month. One day, standing at some distance from her while she, holding her clipboard with her data sheets close to her chest, stared at the trees in silence, contemplating the forest through her senses and her memories and her being at one with the forest. I began to say something. She responded, “Please don’t talk right now. Just be your poet self.” I smiled and then, contemplated the forest in my own way, imagining the wisdom of the huge, old Kily (the Malagasy word for Tamarind) trees that made up the forest, what they knew, what they had seen, how they had fared over the years. The life of imagination that permeates this book is presented not as an idea to cultivate but as a way to live in the world. As I have described freedom, above, it and imagination belong together. Another central but not constantly reiterated idea is that of dialogue. This word does not appear in any major titles in this book and, yet I would argue, is another equally important way to take up this book. A life of dialogue is a life of inclusion that Martin Buber made central to our humanness (explored in Chap. 5, “Freedom All Too Human”). This book is meant to foster and engage with that life of dialogue. Dialogue

xii

Introduction—Reimagining Curriculum Studies and Ecumenical …

is not simply talking together (just words and arguments) but a coming together past our words to a shared humanity that may, ironically, transcend words even as we use words to dialogue. Dialogue means, in part, something bodily, imaginative, unworded. Yes, words there will be, many, many words but they are not just words. They are worlds lived. In a hopeful register, this book is offered as both a way of living mosaically and in dialectical unlearning and wild imagination, experiencing some moment or moments of reimagination and inclusion no matter what vagaries are pursued. All within the purpose of dialogue as a transcendent state toward freedom and connection. Consciousness is another dimension of this book. It is explicitly found in Chaps. 7 “Creativity and Aesthetic Consciousness in Teacher Education” and 8 “Identity, Self, and Liberation” as consciousness of two highly specific forms of awareness: aesthetic consciousness and ethical consciousness. But consciousness is a more profound state than “awareness of X.” Consciousness is, more globally, that which each person deploys to make sense of the world. It can be summarized in the idea of ideology and habitus (embodied ideology), both explored in Chap. 3 “Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom”. Consciousness binds together the trope found throughout this book: “the personal is political,” that trope emanating from the 60s feminist movement. The political is always immediate and lived (personal), manifesting in our everyday lives as a lived experience of the political (socio-political-cultural-individuated-bodily life) which is also consciousness (socio-political-cultural-individuated-bodily). This contrasts with typical political thinking, in which politics is strategically employed from the outside of personal life and consciousness, for the purpose of leveraging social and material resources. Where the personal is invoked, it is typically invoked as the difficult and oppressive experiences within a particular political state and the ways in which a person may take back her/his power through political acts, colloquially known as consciousness raising. In this book that view of politics is set aside in favor of a dialectical image (communal/individual). For instance, in Chap. 8 “Identity, Self, and Liberation” the idea of hegemony is invoked (using Raymond Williams’ vision of it), a strongly conventional political view of consciousness in which consciousness is manipulated from the outside and we are each products of the hegemonic state. While this idea is very illuminating and of value, it only partly reaches into our lives. As William Pinar (2011) points out, subjectivity is not merely a cover for social and cultural knowing. Subjectivity is bone deep. In Chapter 8 (“Identity, Self, and Liberation”), the individual consciousnesses of selfhood of the young dancers in the dance program were not simply set aside as only epiphenomenal to the socio-cultural ground in which consciousness participates. They were afforded the opportunity to see their selves as more than the community/culture in which they lived. They were seen, from within the curriculum, as people crafting new lives without complete reference to socially imposed identities, to discover their subjectivities. In another instance of consciousness, Julia Kristeva (1986) (whose work figures strongly in Chap. 9, Reimagining Time) develops a political-cultural view of consciousness in the form of the Law of the Father as basic to Western culture with women’s consciousness as lying outside that law. This view of consciousness seems like Williams’ hegemonic analysis. However, Kristeva undercuts this as she turns the Law of the Father toward

Introduction—Reimagining Curriculum Studies and Ecumenical …

xiii

a metaphysical reality, not an inescapable material reality, of the difference between men and women. As a way of leveraging this metaphysical reality toward a release from the Law of the Father as the only reality, she deploys imagination as a potential way of seeing past such seemingly deterministic schemes. In yet another form of consciousness, all of Buber’s work is about the inner life or consciousness (explored in Chap. 5, “Freedom All Too Human”) as a person manifests connection outwardly in acts of dialogue. Lastly, consciousness is strongly thematized in Chap. 3 “Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom” in the form of “false consciousness,” a critical theory concept as well as the consciousness of body as a site of unlearning. In all these ways, consciousness is a substrate to the book. This carries to the last section of this Introduction addressing the value of living in “ecumenical restlessness.”

The Need for Ecumenical Restlessness Within Curriculum Studies I once asked David Purpel why James Macdonald never wrote a book. David responded: “Jim was too restless to ever settle down to such a project.” His mind kept on moving in new directions. Macdonald was an ecumenically restless person as he constantly sought new resources to refresh and inform the field. This book is dedicated to that restlessness, to the feeling that we are “stuck” in our ways to the detriment of a truly fluid and fruitful field. It is also dedicated to reopening our eyes to the potentials of the various communities of our field through undercutting our tendency toward univocal dominant orthodoxies. A way into such undercutting is through dialectical unlearning and wild imagination. It could be said that this entire book is dedicated to that process of unfreezing the monocularity and exclusivity that plagues our field, indeed plagues all fields. The topics explored in the rest of the book (freedom, imagination, aesthetics for curriculum, identity, dance, time) are all explored through this constant desire to unlearn, to be surprised, to imagine, to live within the tensions of paradoxes that inform us. Restlessness even marks Macdonald’s essay writing. In that writing he gave almost no “hooks” upon which to hang an interpretation. His writing doesn’t help you along. You are plunged directly into his mind which is so compact and knowing that his writing is almost elliptical. Macdonald invites us into living in his writing rather than teaching how to read him. This book has a somewhat different approach to writing. Central texts are walked through in some detail, assembling theories and discussions of lived experiences designed to mutually support each other. The act of reading is treated as a hope for surprises. That requires not assuming to immediately know what is being meant. Meaning becomes emergent through the lived experience of language (discussed in Chap. 2). Restlessness marks the ideas of mosaical thinking, dialectical unlearning, and wild imagination as well. To think mosaically is to restlessly move among seemingly

xiv

Introduction—Reimagining Curriculum Studies and Ecumenical …

disconnected domains. To live in dialectical unlearning is to constantly disturb the smooth knowing one thought one possessed. To live in wild imagination is to live without concern for proper outcomes. All three ways are meant to call into question all potential orthodoxies and surety. It is in that capacity for self-questioning and wandering that new possibilities may appear. This book is dedicated to the emergence of such possibilities.

References Blumenfeld-Jones, D. S. (2016). The violence of words, words of violence: Keeping the uncomfortable at bay, a Jewish perspective. In “Is curriculum studies a protestant project?: A Jew and some protestants walked into a bar …”. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing. (Special Section, Editor: Donald S. Blumenfeld-Jones), 31(1), 4–12. Heidegger, M. (1977). The age of the world picture (trans. W. Lovitt). In A. I. Tauber (Ed.), The question concerning technology and other essays (pp. 70–88). Palgrave-Macmillan. Kristeva, J. (1986). Women’s time. In Toril Moi (Ed.), The Kristeva reader. Columbia University Press. Pinar, W. F. (2011). The unaddressed “I” of ideology critique. In The character of curriculum studies: Bildung, currere, and the recurring question of the subject (pp. 25–38). Palgrave-Macmillan.

Contents

1

The Illness of Our World: A Critique of Curriculum Studies . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 5

2

Mosaical Thinking and Curriculum Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What is Mosaical Thinking? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What is Curriculum Theory? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Language and Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Structuring a Mosaical Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Scholarly Life: Raising Questions, Too Many Answers . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7 7 10 13 17 18 19

3

Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Self-Critique in the Field of Curriculum Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Curriculum Studies Self-Critique: A Short History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Moribund in a New Key: Global Self-Critique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Being Critical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Founding Axioms, Orthodoxy, and Ideology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Perspectives on Being Critical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jürgen Habermas on the Word “Crisis” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Being Critical: Its Cognates of “Radical” and “Root” . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Dialectical Döppelganger of “Creativity” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bourdieu on Criticality and Self-critique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dialectics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Negative Dialectics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Dialectics of First Impressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dialectical Conundrums: False Consciousness and First Impressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dialectics and Utopianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Unlearning and the Practice of Being Critical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Brief Overview of Unlearning in the Education Field . . . . . . . . . . . Ontology and Unlearning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Unlearning the Lessons of Knowing: A Dialectical Analysis . . . . . . .

21 22 23 26 29 29 33 33 36 38 39 40 42 44 47 48 51 51 52 54 xv

xvi

Contents

Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

58 58

4

Wild Imagination and the Critical Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Politics at Every Second: Power in Everyday Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Varieties of Wild Imagination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Viaticus Hooveraneous: A Story of Wild Imagination . . . . . . . . . . . . . Imagination in Art, Imagination in Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Naïve Disposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Uses of Imagination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hans-Georg Gadamer and Embodied Imagination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wild Imagination, the Equal of Reason and More … . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Levinas and Pre-States of Bodily Imagination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Practicing Wild Imagination as a Critical Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Radical Imagination: Not Wild Enough . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Examples of Wild Imagination in Curriculum Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hogan Dreams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Trois Chaises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Curriculum, Control, and Creativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wild Imagination and Curriculum Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

61 61 65 65 66 67 72 73 75 75 77 78 80 80 86 88 90 90

5

Freedom All Too Human . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Freedom: The Heart of Curriculum Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Freedom as a Possession of the Individual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Freedom As Dialogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Primary Relationships to the World: I-It and I-Thou . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Freedom and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Freedom in Dialogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Freedom and Responsibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Freedom in Curriculum Studies Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

93 94 97 103 103 106 110 117 123 128

6

Pure Imagination and Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pure Imagination and Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Analysis of “Pure Imagination,” the Song . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stanza 1—Discovering Your Imagination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stanza 2—Experiencing an Imaginative World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stanza 3—Forming Your Own Imaginative World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stanza 4—A Paean to Pure Imagination: The Master Speaks of His Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Ontology of Pure Imagination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

129 130 133 134 140 143 145 146 149

Contents

xvii

7

Creativity and Aesthetic Consciousness in Teacher Education . . . . . Prologue: Embodiment and Aesthetic Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction: Contemporary Society and Aesthetics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aesthetic Consciousness and Creativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Teaching With/Through/For the Arts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

151 151 152 154 159 172 173

8

Identity, Self, and Liberation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction: A Dialectic of Identity and Self . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aesthetics, Living Aesthetically, and Social Class/Race . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dance Resources for the African-American Community: Variety Within Identity Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Identity and Power: A Middle School Modern Dance Project . . . . . . . . . Postscript: Linking Pure Imagination and Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

175 177 182

Reimagining Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction: The Multiplicity of Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Time in Curriculum Thinking: Dwayne Huebner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Time in a Dancer’s Life: Curriculum Possibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Elasticity of Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Monumental and Cursive Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Personal Project Gives Rise to Theory: A Journey Through Time . . . Time in Curricular Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

203 204 206 208 213 215 223 226 227

10 Epilogue—Living a Mosaical Life, Living Ironically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Origins of Mosaical Thinking and Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Living a Mosaical Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Living Ironically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Finis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

229 230 232 235 237 237

9

186 193 197 200

Chapter 1

The Illness of Our World: A Critique of Curriculum Studies

Abstract This chapter presents the concerns of the book. The field is in a stasis state, frozen into one ideology, practicing forms of exclusion and marginalization. This situation is found multiple times during its history. This chapter lays out some initial ways of thinking about this dilemma. Keywords Critique of CS · Curriculum Studies · intellectual crisis [This opening chapter was originally presented on the panel “Growing the Field,” AERA, April 2009, San Diego CA, a panel of past Division B (Curriculum Studies) V-Ps organized by David Flinders, the VP of Division B at the time. It was eventually published in the Division B Newsletter by Bill Ayers as well as republished in my first book (Blumenfeld-Jones, 2012). It stands as a gateway to this book, laying out, briefly, the concerns that animate this book. The field, in the estimation of the author, is in a stasis state, frozen into one ideology. As laid out in Chapter 3 on dialectical unlearning and self-critique, the field has been found in this situation multiple times during its history. This is not to say that, at the present time, there are not practitioners of other interests. It is to say that unless one is speaking to the accepted dominant narrative, one’s work is relegated to small corners of the field. This critique of a dominant narrative and its problematics will be found throughout the book and a central purpose of the book is to offer ways of unfreezing our conversations and work as well as opening ignored topics that offer ways of reimagining our field. The rest of this book lays out more specific ways of addressing these concerns or new concerns that coordinate with these initial concerns. Altogether, this book is a call for renewal through practices of reimagining broached in this chapter.] In my presentation today I’m going to address three questions that David [Flinders, VP of Division B, Curriculum Studies, AERA] crafted (with our input) as prompts for our consideration. The first of these questions is: How can Division B advocate for keeping key curriculum questions (variations on What Is Worthwhile? and Who Benefits?) alive among educators, policy makers, and the general public? My response to this question is twofold. First, I have a concern that most people will hear “What knowledge is of most worth?” (the classic curriculum question) rather than the actual question: “What is worthwhile?” When we ask the latter question, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 D. S. Blumenfeld-Jones, Reimagining Curriculum Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9877-4_1

1

2

1 The Illness of Our World …

we can open up other dimensions of our reality. Educational sites (of all kinds, not simply classrooms) present people the opportunity to simultaneously develop selves, build selves, be in states of becoming. A concern for knowledge is not necessarily crucial to this existential project and process, and yet in curriculum we tend to ignore questions of existence and “self-building,” focusing purely on the epistemological. We rarely address questions of existential import that, I claim, are at the base of most people’s concerns in life (not questions of knowledge): of what am I afraid, what and/or who have I lost that I cannot find, about who do I care, how can I make a world that will attend to my needs and the needs of others (for we are in “this” together, and I realize the compromises I will have to make)? Second, the proposed questions of worth and benefit are words of rational calculation and, thus, continue to conceptualize the world as a place of technical concern. Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) has critiqued Rational Act Theory as inadequate to understanding how we live together, and he asserts that it gives far too much credit to logic. As you will see, in a moment, I, too, want to reject a reliance on logic. But for now: Why not ask the questions of existential angst and goodness first? This leads to the second question I have chosen: What interconnections might curriculum scholars develop among themselves to combat the ever-present “Balkanization of the field”? I would offer a parallel critique of this question. As the first question treats the concern as one of rational calculation, so this question begins with the notion of Balkanization as a fact and uses the military language of combating these divisions. But can we combat a war with more combat? The questions offered earlier are questions that might avoid the collisions, for they access what I would assert is a “deeper” level of our existence in which we are mutually conjoined. We are all motivated by questions of angst and goodness and joy and fear, and we address them in ways that on the surface hide this mutuality. Thus, the Balkanization may be nothing more than our holding on to “realities” that are only leverages and not real, and if we cut away the dross that covers our real concerns, we might be able to talk, to work together, to find the life we actually share. Combat may only raise new barriers behind which we can hide. But more of this in a moment. This brings me to the third question: How can self-critical scholarship in Curriculum Studies be better supported by the field and especially by AERA when there seems to be a privileging of finished and supposedly firmly decided “normal science”? Here I worry about the question, for I do not understand the binary of “selfcritical” and “normal science.” Is being self-critical “abnormal”? If we accept the binary, we may be seeking that self-criticism become normal. But normality is, by definition, bland. Abnormality, on the other hand can provide an energy, pointing toward that which doesn’t go without saying. The abnormal person often acts in socially destabilizing ways that can be fruitful, revealing levels of human awareness not available to those of us who are “normal,” but of course, who among us is “normal”? Does abnormal suggest that being self-critical is an odd practice? But, in any case, I want to reject this question and not allow science into our thinking in the first place. We have come to believe that there is science and there is art, and they are

1 The Illness of Our World …

3

opposites (see C.P. Snow’s [1993] “Two Cultures”). I want to aestheticize the field but not allow science to be its counter, for aesthetics is an avenue to knowing just as is science, and we need not discuss science to establish this. This brings me to what I want to explore: how our world has become a frozen world, perhaps a dead world, and how we might elasticize our thinking past the binaries. Let me begin by describing Heidegger’s notion of “the age of the world picture,” (1977) for I think it describes the walls and barriers behind which we continue to “live” (although perhaps we are dying: do the questions not suggest that we are in some possible backwater that is even in an end-state?). The age of the world picture is our age in which we have conceptualized the world within a frame such that what lies outside the frame is specious and mystical, unworthy of the name “knowledge,” and what lies within the frame adheres to rules of convergence and connection. The frame, the picture, is static, composed such that we believe we have captured the phenomenon pictured in that world adequately—no, more than adequately, completely. We know that our framed world is not complete, and so we may build still other frames that overlap the present frame in question (other categories of analysis—class, gender, sexuality, “disability” or “differently abled,” and more), supplement the present frame in question for a fuller picture, or supplant the present frame in question with new frames we think more adequate to the task. The important point is the frame itself, the way we go about our work of thinking about our interests. We come to see our frame as the world itself rather than as a leverage fiction for moving through the phenomenon in certain fruitful ways but ways which are only temporary, partial, incomplete, interesting, but finally, not satisfying for the phenomenon that will always escape our understanding. We take class, we take gender, we take currere, and we marry them for a more complex picture of the world, but nonetheless it is a picture, an image, a representation. Over against this I place the sweetness of the skin, that look into the eyes that can bring the world back to us in all its fecund sensibility, that can make this person this person and not some person, can become aware of the specificity of this life and not just any life. It is the sensed that brings us back to our senses and makes the world of you present to me. I don’t want to romanticize the senses (as if they hold some truth our minds do not hold), but we are abstracted from the world when we do not employ them, and this abstraction does violence to that which is right at hand. And it is this that is what I term “aestheticized”: a flexible yielding to the Other, to others, to the rock in our midst—an openness to what I can be when I am in contact with that other on its own terms, whatever those terms are—recognizing that I am simultaneously filling in my gaps of understanding of the other with what I already understand and so do not experience the other, Others, this other but only my pre-understanding of its existence. Emmanuel Levinas (1998) teaches us that prior to the senses there is sensibility, a bodily state, pre-verbal and pre-symbolic, that provides a moment of openness to the Other before it congeals into sensing the other. While this sensibility is quickly, if not immediately, brought into a knowing of the senses and the cognitive enters the scene to make sense of the Other, the just prior state of sensibility provides an availability to the Other that transcends all we think we know. This transcendence quickly is closed by our employment of the categories we use to understand our

4

1 The Illness of Our World …

experience, but even knowing that transcendence is available changes everything, bringing us into a more aware state of what we do not know, which is at the heart of an ethical life. In curriculum studies I worry that we think we know anything at all, and we must ask ourselves, can the same be said of our ethics: We know what is good for another? This should be, always, a concern and worry for us. And none of this, you can tell, is a matter of logic. It is logic that employs class, gender, classrooms, subjects, Foucauldian power, whatever turns our interests. We forget that these are only moments in the human encounter, and the human encounter could be construed in other ways equally “true.” My concern is: we have come to believe in our categories and have forgotten, if we ever knew, how to live in the phenomenon itself. Can we do so? Modern and postmodern perspectives tell us “no,” that we automatically substitute our theoretical constructions for what we experience. This is the meaning of simulacrum: we never experience the thing itself but only a media-driven, intellectually derived image of the “thing” in front of us. But why is this eternally “true?” I would assert that this is the problem: as Joseph Schwab (1969) asserted—the theoretic stays far away from the lived reality of everyday life. Such reality is messy; our categories, our logic is not. We have cleansed the world but at what cost? Further, our categories, our logic (questions that are core curriculum questions, notions of value, of Balkanization) is historical. There has been work done to show that the basis for at least Western curriculum is mystical in character so that the trivium and quadrivium had spiritual components that were, at one time, credible. Knowledge wasn’t just knowledge but also an experience of ourselves connected to things and living toward an enhanced connection that, at least, potentially, moved us toward an ethically formed world. These mystical and spiritual dimensions have been sheared off in our modern world of the world picture that cannot abide that which can escape the picture and even call it into question, for these dimensions are ever shifting and not easily contained within the representation. The ways in which I am thinking come from an old tradition. We tend to treat our traditions as errors we leave behind. This is a progressivist dream, a modernist fairy tale, that as we understand better, so we leave behind the mistakes in thinking of the past. But what do we lose when we act in this way? I ask us to at least consider the possibility that we have lost something of value. However, and ironically, it may not be possible to lose our traditions even if we try to do so. Gadamer (2004) argues that even in the most revolutionary upheaval no tradition is left behind. Rather, the revolution leans heavily on the tradition as the substrate that is dragged along with the revolution but that remains hidden from view. The revolution makes no sense except in the light of that against which it is revolting. In this way, at least, revolutions are highly dependent on their “Other.” What occurs when we ignore our heritage, our past, our traditions? Martin Buber (1993) asserts that we lose freedom. We are nothing except what our communities provide for us, nothing except the kinds of space we share with others (of all kinds), nothing except what nature provides. Freedom can only be found in communion with these. Freedom cannot be found in stand-alone independence of individuals (which is, in any case, an illusion but is the state we cultivate in this particular age of the

1 The Illness of Our World …

5

world picture). Freedom is in connection. Habermas (1972) has tried to teach us that theory is the way to connection. He recalls that the original theoria was a person (our word “theory” is derived from this person’s title) whose function was to witness the rituals of his people and link them to the cosmos and bring that cosmos to the people both for their edification and for building wholeness in their world. I am concerned about the three questions with which I began, for, I would argue, these questions continue to accept the terms of the debate as dictated by the cultural logic of our age of the world picture. I, too, am functioning from a cultural logic (I couldn’t even have these thoughts, nor could you understand them if we weren’t partaking of a shared cultural way of thinking) even if it is not the presently dominant one. We are living an impoverished life when we forget to remind AERA, policy makers, teachers, children, and parents of these alternatives to our presently dominant cultural logic, when we fail to point toward how our reduced state of affairs is, perhaps a consequence of not taking on this aestheticizing of experience and social life as consciously cultivated and valued in our lives. Note 1.

Presented on the panel “Growing the Field,” AERA, April 2009, San Diego CA, a panel of past Division B (Curriculum Studies) V-Ps organized by David Flinders, VP Division B of AERA at the time.

References Blumenfeld-Jones, D. S. (2012). Curriculum and the aesthetic life: Hermeneutics, body, democracy, and ethics in curriculu theory and practice. NYC: Peter Lang. Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. J. D. (1992). Invitation to reflexive sociology. The University of Chicago Press. Buber, M. (1993). Education in between man and man. (Trans. Ronald Gregor-Smith). Routledge, pp. 98–122. Gadamer, H-G. (2004). l Truth and method. (2nd rev. ed.). Continuum. Habermas, J. (1972). Knowledge and human interests. Beacon. Heidegger, M. (1977). The age of the World picture. (Trans. W. Lovitt). In A. I. Tauber (Ed.), The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 70–88. Snow, C. P. (1993). Two cultures. Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 2

Mosaical Thinking and Curriculum Theory

Abstract This chapter elaborates the idea of mosaical thinking: what it is and how it is practiced. It also elaborates what it means to practice curriculum theory by laying out more conventional views of theory and how curriculum theory differs. Lastly, it explores the idea of language as lived experience rather than language as pointing toward lived experience. This exposition presents a way of reading for lived experience. Keywords Curriculum Studies · Curriculum Theory · Discourse · Emmanuel Levinas · Jacques Derrida · Jurgen Habermas · Martin Buber · William F. Pinar [In the epilogue to this book (pp. 229–237) I discuss the origins of the book as a key to what I learned in writing this book. I leave it to the epilogue to present the details of that evolution and development as well as what I think it means. In this chapter, however, I want to present as to how mosaical thinking as a specific way of thinking/writing arose during the making of this book and why I have chosen this trope for characterizing the book. Additionally, I want to address the basis for the approach to theory which I perform in this book.] mosaic: a surface decoration made by inlaying small pieces of variously colored material to form pictures or patterns (Merriam-Webster—on-line, 2020)

What is Mosaical Thinking? Mosaical thinking refers to the image provided in the epigram above: thinking that is composed of multiple, distinct elements that are brought together under a larger banner, coalescing into an image that is more than the sum of its parts. In beginning to write and assemble this book, I found such multiple, distinct elements that, in many cases, have been treated, in the literature as separate topics. Here they are brought together under one banner which, itself, goes unnamed. While there is an unnamed whole, this does not detract from the ways in which the multiple themes of freedom, imagination, dialectics, and unlearning, cannot be teased apart as separate subjects. They were (and are) of a piece, one whole cloth with its many dimensions © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 D. S. Blumenfeld-Jones, Reimagining Curriculum Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9877-4_2

7

8

2 Mosaical Thinking and Curriculum Theory

that coordinate with each other in multiple ways. The process of writing brought this to mind in a concrete way. While addressing one of the themes, for instance freedom, other themes, such as imagination and dialectics also came to mind as connected to the theme at hand. Unlearning itself was never far behind as the ground on which freedom, imagination, and dialectics lived but, itself could not be understood outside of dialectics and is a species of imagination that leads to a form of freedom. Or perhaps it was dialectics which was most foundational. On the other hand, the life of imagination seemed to constantly crop up in my considerations. In short, they each individually and together hovered above and infiltrated the text even when they were not the center of attention. This writing experience speaks to words, ideas, and themes as complexity. What is meant by complexity? To address this let me first say, from my perspective, what is non-complexity in reference to writing and thinking. Non-complexity is to treat words, ideas, and themes as separate containers of meaning which are then put together in different constellations of presentation with each element (each word, idea, and/or theme) remaining separate and sovereign as to its own meaning. Complexity, for me, is meaning contained in one word, idea, or theme each of which (each word, idea, or theme) harbors all the other coordinated words, ideas, and themes, even when these others are not seemingly actively present in the writing/thinking. All the meanings of the words/ideas/themes comingle constantly, even if only one of them is featured at any one moment. The featured word/idea/theme only has meaning in the presence of the other words/ideas/themes. The words/ideas of each theme are, thus, more like members in the complexity of the overarching thought, which can never be fully articulated, achieving itself only as a complex living entity. The meaning of the whole is something beyond simply an arithmetical assemblage. As I experienced this complexity, I had to reconsider what constitutes a book of this sort. This book couldn’t be about one topic examined in multiple ways. It couldn’t be designed linearly to culminate in a final, triumphal statement, even though all books are, by their physical nature, linear. It had to be about all the themes/ideas/words and their constant intersections. After considering various ways to imagine these relationships the idea of a mosaic arose: small pieces (dialectics, unlearning, freedom, imagination each a swatch of specific tile) which, together, form pictures or patterns. These pictures or patterns that emerge, when examined closely, are assemblages of the basic tiles such that, from a distance the assemblage congeals into something we identify as a face or a tree or a shape of any sort or, in our case, a curriculum. Just so, this book is an assemblage of freedom, imagination, dialectics, and unlearning, these “tiles” used repeatedly to present different images that are decipherable as identity or time or paradise or imagination as freedom/dialectics/unlearning or freedom as imagination/dialectics/unlearning or.... Imagination, freedom, dialectics, and unlearning are all at once in play with each other in multiple configurations. The point is that even when discussing one of these basic tiles, the other “tiles” are also present. When looking at a mosaic, we actually only look at one tile or small set of tiles at a time and

What is Mosaical Thinking?

9

from it extrapolate the larger whole. How do we read mosaically? We try to always keep all the elements in mind while immersed in some specific inquiry. What is the purpose of naming such thinking “mosaical”? What leverage is gained thereby? The answers to these questions are left to the epilogue. Suffice it to say that at this moment, it calls for a form of recursive reading in which the multiple elements are noticed and in constant play, sometimes “behind the scenes” and sometimes at the side of the stage and sometimes as featured players. That is, mosaical thinking is not a matter of merely “adding up” of elements. It is constant juggling of all the elements in various patterns. I want to provide an image of mosaical thinking grounded in a theater experience I had many years ago that brought me, now, to think in this way. As I wrote this book, that experience returned to me. In 1976 I attended a performance of Meredith Monk’s “Quarry” (Monk being a world-renowned musician/composer/dancer/theater-director/writer—Monk, 1977) I was attending the last performance of “Quarry” on the recommendation of a good friend whose words rang in my ears as I watched. “Monk’s work is amazing, beautiful, engrossing, simply amazing. You mustn’t miss this.” I had several years earlier performed in a work Monk had staged at Douglass College when I was an undergraduate at Rutgers University. I was able to spend two days with her and her company and was enchanted with her and what we performed. So, I eagerly looked forward to seeing this work. When I entered the theater, I saw a wide-open space the size of a long gymnasium. The seating was bleachers along both sides of the space. On the floor of the space were multiple small sets, each illuminated in a pool of light. As the piece proceeded, some set or other would be highlighted with lighting and was occupied by people doing things, sometimes singing Monk’s strange music, sometimes talking, sometimes moving, sometimes acting out a “normal” scene, sometimes multiples of those things. I found the emerging work confounding. Nothing seemed connected with anything else. It was incoherent chaos, and I grew increasingly annoyed as I couldn’t make any sense of anything. Then, midway through the evening all activities in the various little set pieces ended and a large group of people moved slowly through the whole space, from one side of the gymnasium to the other, carrying white poles with small white model planes and white hats and other white objects on top. Its function, for me, was to wash away what we had seen/experienced and yet unify what I had seen. The model planes were WWII planes and, in my mind I began to hear/see events from the first part. I came to realize that this piece was, in part, exploring the experience of a little girl during WWII whose ancestry was Jewish (one set piece was of a clearly Biblical couple doing chores and talking in incomprehensible language). There was another of a couple in their clearly 1940s living room with 1940s music coming from a radio who I came to imagine were her parents. In the opening set piece, Monk herself lay under a quilt moaning, wailing in fear. Here she was, again, under her cover, moaning and crying out as the people moved slowly through the space. I suddenly felt I “understood” that this was a story of her nightmare and the nightmare of a world under a ruthless dictator. I knew this not through what she told me in the program but through experiencing viscerally the music/movements/acting,

10

2 Mosaical Thinking and Curriculum Theory

finding a coherent “narrative” made of, at first, seemingly disparate elements. I had stayed patient with myself and Monk, convinced there was something here, accepting the confusion I was experiencing. Once I discovered the “hook” for understanding, for the rest of the evening I was able to move forward as the piece unfolded and backward to earlier elements until, at the end my mind was experiencing the whole of the evening, moving back and forth across and among the elements. The piece dealt not only with her experience. On “the other side” of this washing out of the space there was an extended rant by a Chinese dictator on a high platform in front of a film of a quarry filled with huge boulders being crawled over by people who had appeared live in the piece. And there was more. What makes this mosaical. Imagine this theater space with these separate set pieces. Imagine holding them in mind as the piece moved from piece to piece. Imagine that moment when the dancers in white moved slowly through the whole space, their actions, for me, tying the myriad “pieces” together. Imagine beginning to be able to hold the multiple images in mind as the piece proceeded on its linear way toward its end. This is an image of experiencing “mosaical thinking.” Experiencing mosaical thinking is central to what is intended in this book. That is, the theory practice that is performed in this book is not an intellectual practice alone. It is the kind of mosaical thinking performed on a bodily/emotional/intuitive/imaginative platform as well as on the intellectual level. The next section addresses how experiencing theory is core to this work.

What is Curriculum Theory? This book addresses curriculum studies as a theoretical practice. But what is theory as I see it? To address this, I must first address the concept itself. In science very few ideas are allowed the title of “theory.” Those “theories” which are allowed the honorific of the term are theories which have so much factual demonstration in their support that they are taken to be factual themselves. Typically, theoretical work is understood as abstract work. That is, theory is the distilled description of reality, a condensed representation of such reality able to describe that reality in succinct, powerful statements. It can “see” below the dross surface of everydayness in which everything may appear to be different from everything else, showing how the multitudinous of everyday life is held together by some basic simple statements. Einstein’s special theory of relativity and Darwin’s evolutionary theory are such theories: simple in their outlines but powerful precisely because those outlines can account for many ostensibly different phenomena. So states The American Museum of Natural History website, describing theory as follows: In everyday use, the word “theory” often means an untested hunch, or a guess without supporting evidence. But for scientists, a theory has nearly the opposite meaning. A theory is a well-substantiated explanation of an aspect of the natural world that can incorporate laws, hypotheses, and facts. The theory of gravitation, for instance, explains why apples fall from trees and astronauts float in space. Similarly, the theory of evolution explains why so

What is Curriculum Theory?

11

many plants and animals—some very similar and some very different—exist on Earth now and in the past, as revealed by the fossil record.

Theory is an honorific afforded very few statements in the sciences. We cannot expect that this view of theory is applicable to our arena. We are not dealing with well-substantiated explanations of the social world. We can, at best, offer reasonable descriptions of that social world such that the descriptions afford us a particular leverage point that may be useful to our practices. There is another way to think about theory that does seem to connect with curriculum theory, although, again, it appears to be an overreach of what our work is capable. Jurgen Habermas (1971) described “theory” as follows. He wrote that the philosopher Schelling took a traditional attitude toward theory and its partner, practice: for theory to remain as such it must be divorced from action and the world of the practical: “ … by studying a strictly theoretical philosophy … we become most immediately acquainted with ideas, and only Ideas provide action with energy and ethical significance.” (301)

Habermas noted that, from this perspective, for knowledge to be true it must be “free from mere human interests and is based on Ideas—in other words, knowledge that has taken a theoretical turn” (p. 301). Habermas noted that there is a religious origin to the term theory, stemming from the Greek classical world. When Greek cities performed public celebrations, a theoros, the city’s representative, was sent to witness the celebration in the name of the city. The theoros “abandoned himself to the sacred events” and, in so doing, “transferred [himself] to the contemplation of the cosmos” (p. 301). In like fashion, in more contemporary times, the philosopher and the theorist “bring[s] himself into accord with the proportions of the cosmos and reproduc[es] them internally” (p. 302). The purpose of achieving such accord was to, through these actions, be able to tell the rest of us how to live our lives in accord with the cosmos. That is the traditional purpose of theorizing, and it is the sense it carries with it when we consider what it means to be a theorist. Theory, then, appears to be, in both ways outlined above, an abstracting of very real phenomena. Its power lies in the ways its usually simple formula or algorithms or fundamental descriptions (the usual work of philosophy) go to explaining a plethora of disparate physical or social phenomena. The kind of theory in this book is not about formulas and algorithms. It is a mixture of seemingly abstract discussions, concrete descriptions of experiences, and exposition of other people’s “theories.” Typically, the “concrete descriptions” of theory manifest in the world are taken to be examples of the theories offered. In the case of this book, however, the described experiences are not offered as just examples that illustrate the theories but as furtherance of the theories themselves such that were one to only read the “theory” parts of the writing, I contend one would not understand the theories themselves. As I challenged my students, “tell me what this is in everyday lived experiences. Do not spin theory yarns that may cohere together as an interesting narrative that floats thousands of feet above the earth. Speak theory as an everyday, lived experience”. For that is what is theory: descriptions of everyday lived experience. The theories may seem abstract. They may seem elegant and filled with lovely language. But, without the

12

2 Mosaical Thinking and Curriculum Theory

lived experience of the theory as it is experienced everyday, those theories are of no use. Further, the lived experience of the theory adds to our understanding of the theory itself. William Pinar helps center this book and this discussion of theory through his approach to curriculum theory (Pinar, 2012). He writes of his approach to curriculum theory as follows: “My work in curriculum theory has emphasized the significance of subjectivity to education. The significance is not a solipsistic retreat from the public sphere.... The significance of subjectivity is that it is inseparable from the social” (p. 5). In this book there are presentations of typical social theory and personal anecdotes that are situated within the theory as both the lived experiences of such theory and, in some cases (such as the case of “wild imagination”) outgrowths of lived experience. One might see these lived experiences presentations as images of the subjective interacting with the social, providing a context for understanding the theory. But they are not merely examples of the theory. They extend the theory, provide details that allow others to consider their own lived experiences in reference to the theory. Thus, the reader may consider her/his life in light of the theory through imagining her/his own stories and experiences. Conversely, what seem like obvious narratives about an event, when subjected to theoretical thinking, reveal the underlying, unseen expressions of theoretical understanding. An event which appears, on the surface, to be a straightforward rendering, for instance of a student losing extra-curricular privileges until she brings up her academic performance, becomes an expression of how hegemonic forces bring the storyteller, her teacher, to understand that the girl is caught within the vice of poverty and lack of family resources possessed by other students. The teacher “believed” that the student needed this kind of encouragement (the withholding of desired events) without seeing that she also believed that such students were responsible for their own lack of performance and access. This thinking locked the learner into a continuing cycle of meaning which she would have difficulty escaping and the teacher felt justified in this entrapment, until she saw that she was participating in the entrapment. This traces a wholly different life that expands into larger implications than the immediate story might appear to be. This appears only when re-analyzed through theoretical practice. This is what is meant by “the personal is political” which makes multiple appearances in this book. In my own dissertation I practiced this through, first, recounting my development from childhood into adulthood, becoming a professional dancer (a chapter titled “Personal Body”) and then re-analyzing the narrative in the light of the sociology of the body and French feministe’s concept of gender and jouissance (in the chapter titled “Social Body”). Throughout this present book narratives are provided which are not merely stories but become expressions of particular theoretical understandings enabling the dialectic of the theoretical to give rise to the understanding of the immediate personal, and the personal give rise to seeking a theoretical understanding around which the story is structured with the story possibilities as theory remaining variable and protean. Given that stories are always complex, no theory can completely account for the story and no story can completely verify a theory. They are in synergistic relation to each other. This book is an attempt to complexly present curriculum theory through a mosaical and multiply temporal experience. That this book is “about” experience is central to the work. Without such experiencing of the theory as, itself, in its own words, a form

What is Curriculum Theory?

13

of lived experience, the “theory” in the book would be inert. If anything, it is hoped that the theory is lived and alive. How can theory be lived and alive? So far, the discussions of this book point to elements of the book and the way they are mixed together. There is one last image to provide, that of language itself as the ship upon which the whole text rides.

Language and Experience In this book the attempt is to undermine language. To understand this, I want to turn to the writing of Emmanuel Levinas, not as an example of the writing of this book but, rather, as an image of what it means to attempt to undermine language while using language. Emmanuel Levinas wrote two books which are companions to each other, and which stand as his most enduring contribution to our understanding of ourselves. The first is Totality and Infinity: An Essay in Exteriority (1969). The second, which was written in response to Jacques Derrida’s critique of the book, is Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (1998). Levinas, in Totality and Infinity, lacks ordinary logical structure. He uses both typical philosophical discussion (dealing in highly abstract concepts) and nontechnical, non-philosophical language. In this second form of language, he employs perfectly ordinary language in unordinary ways. For instance, he uses the word “face” (one of his most important “technical” terms in the work) in both its simple meaning of a person’s “face” and, also, something much more profound and transcendent, standing for the whole of his thesis. When he introduces the word “face” it is in the context of actually looking at someone but as he describes that looking, the word itself becomes transformed into the ways in which we stand in relation to the wholeness of the human being through “face.” And face is not simply the features of a face or even the wholeness of the face but an image that allows us to think about the infinity of a human being, the purity that exists before we label a person through how we interact with that face. In short, “face” becomes expanded until it carries weight well beyond its physical status. The power of such language resides in the fact that it is always both ordinary and everyday and also something larger and more transcendent, simultaneously. The ways in which Levinas’ idea of “metaphysical desire,” introduced at the very outset of the book, is quintessential of his way of thinking. When he introduced this idea as the fundamental desire of all human beings, it made no sense. How can you have a desire beyond material existence since desires are typically connected with materiality or physical desire? Even were you to posit a thirst or desire for knowledge, this still connects something abstract (knowledge) to something physical (thirst). As it turns out, Levinas means by “metaphysical desire” a desire for connection with something entirely outside oneself, something to which you could never physically connect. That is what makes it “metaphysical.” In presenting this crucial idea Levinas includes images of the desire for food and to live among nature (trees, grass, sky).

14

2 Mosaical Thinking and Curriculum Theory

He tells us that unlike these “things” of nature (food, trees, grass, sky) which can be fulfilled (we can have enough to eat, we can get our fill, at some point, of enjoying nature), metaphysical desire is desire for something which can never be filled. He likens “metaphysical desire” to “you can never have enough goodness.” We can understand the concreteness of “never enough goodness,” can feel what that feels like bodily and emotionally. Levinas uses this to tell us that, as with goodness, metaphysical desire is unfillable and, therefore, the ultimate desire, even beyond goodness (for which we can, at times, declare satisfaction). This brief recounting of one Levinasian trope illustrates how he mixes the abstract (metaphysics) with highly concrete images (food and nature) and an internal intellectual/emotional state (desire for goodness) in a complex mélange of elements. To come to terms with Levinas requires sinking into the words as lived meaning, no matter the level of abstraction. It means not discarding elements that don’t “connect,” not selecting some elements as in a bouquet of thought while throwing away the detritus. There is no detritus in such writing/thinking. Considering its implications for how we live, we can ask ourselves, “What does it feel like to attach words to experience? What happens to experience when I take words and use them to make sense of it?” In other words, it means living the text rather than making logical sense of the text. We must stop the logic in order to live the text through such imagining. In a similar fashion I see this present book as not presenting logical structures to be considered for their logical soundness but, rather, experiencing states of being through words in order to imagine life in the light of those descriptions. Thus, dialectics, unlearning, freedom, and imagination are all presented as ways of living rather than ideas about living. And, as already noted, mosaically, they are always all present in one way or another, informing the life element (freedom, imagination, criticality, creativity, identity, unlearning, dialectical living, time) being explored. Levinas’ work is not a comprehensive review of all the literature on ethics (which is the fundamental “topic” of his books). Rather, it is a rendering of a kind of “story” of how we craft a self (an identity) and how, as we are doing so, we can “discover” our capacity for being responsible for another human being (the basis for living ethically), not through learning the rules of responsibility but through a direct experience of our own capacity for such a state. Levinas draws together multiple “sources” but only as necessary for what he wants us to understand. Similarly, this present book is not a comprehensive review of extant literature on the topics at hand. Rather, it presents an image that draws from some of the literature that provides help in living those images. In some cases, as in the chapter “Reimagining Freedom” there is a discussion of the standard Western vision of freedom in order to present a foil to the Buberian vision of freedom. In the chapter on “Dialectical Unlearning,” there is a discussion of moments in the history of the field of Curriculum Studies in which a critical call of unlearning is made but not a thorough review of every critique made of the field. There is no pretense to comprehensiveness. Rather, there is a presentation of images of lived experiences. None of the above tells us about how language functions as lived experience. It is Jacques Derrida’s critique of Levinas that allowed Levinas to find a way toward

Language and Experience

15

language as more than assertions about reality, but in a sense the basis for experiencing that reality. Levinas had attempted to avoid the pitfalls of language as being able to speak completely for our experience of the world (what Levinas termed the “totalization” of the world as if words captured completely what we experienced). Derrida insisted that, despite the great qualities of this book and the clear importance of Levinas’ work, the book had failed to avoid “totalization.” Levinas responded to the critique by writing a second book, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (1998). Derrida, in his critique of Levinas, asserted that Levinas’ work was a: messianic eschatology from which Levinas draws inspiration [which] seeks neither to assimilate itself into what is called a philosophical truism, nor even to “complete” philosophical truisms . . . It seeks to be understood from within a recourse to experience itself. Experience itself and that which is most irreducible within experience: the passage and departure toward the other; the other itself as what is most irreducibly other within it: Others. (1978, p. 103)

Derrida continued, “[I]t is but a question of designating a space or a hollow within naked experience where this eschatology can be understood and where it must resonate” (p. 103). Experience is well imaged by Derrida in this image of “a space or a hollow within naked experience” (p. 103). This space of emptiness (“hollow”) is hollow only in the sense that its emptiness is replete with a kind of immediacy that is “naked” or exposed with nothing (no philosophical truisms) to hide behind. The description of “hollow... naked experience” begins to reveal language as experience. Initially, Derrida seemed to assert that Levinas successfully negotiated this difficult terrain: This unthinkable truth of living experience … cannot possibly be encompassed by philosophical speech without immediately revealing, by philosophy’s own light, that philosophy’s surface is severely cracked, and that what was taken for its solidity is its rigidity. It could doubtless be shown that it is in the nature of Levinas’s writing, at its decisive moments, to move along these cracks, masterfully progressing by negations, and by negation against negation. Its proper route is not that of an “either this … or that,” but of a “neither this … nor that.” The poetic force of metaphor is often the trace of this rejected alternative, this wounding of language. Through it, in its opening, experience itself is silently revealed. (1978, p. 112)

Levinas’ main move is an act of negation. He traverses philosophy by “revealing, by philosophy’s own light, that philosophy’s surface is severely cracked” and pursuing his discourse by “mov[ing] along... [these] cracks.” Philosophy was seen as a kind of “solidity” which, it turns out is “rigid” and, thus, brittle and open to being cracked. Levinas rent this solidity/rigidity by “wounding... language.” In the end, however, Derrida thought that Levinas failed to make a closure with “naked experience” outside of language. Levinas was still doing philosophy in sense that philosophical language (“philosophical truisms” which Levinas explored and attempted to surpass) may pretend to objectively present daily experience but it actually holds daily experience at arm’s length through categories and logic, never directly engaging with experience. Levinas was attempting, through language, to escape this problem of language but Derrida claimed he failed.

16

2 Mosaical Thinking and Curriculum Theory

As I have indicated, Levinas agreed with Derrida’s assessment of his work. He, too, felt his work had failed to escape language. In his subsequent book, he more successfully used language to avoid the trap of language. Where Totality and Infinity had laid out a reasonable, almost step-wise phenomenological rendering of the coming to be of ethics and responsibility within a person, in Otherwise than Being (Levinas, 1998) Levinas took a more non-linear approach by introducing non-linguistic dimensions of experience. If Totality and Infinity was one thing after another, Otherwise than Being was a nest of woven strands of almost simultaneous experiences that vibrated back and forth between each other (similar to the way Monk’s Quarry was structured). Levinas’ problem is based on the linear sequential character of language that congeals the world into tight boxes of meaning. How does this happen? Language, conventionally, is used to distill an experience into its essence through assigning words to the experience that locate the experience in what is already known. This locating reduces that which is different from me or other than me (other as in what is not me) so that the other’s unique singularity disappears. Language makes the other just more of what I already know (by assigning words I already know to “explain” what I do not yet know). Levinas described this process as making other same (turning this other into something familiar and, therefore, not different from what is already known, thus same). In this way, through language, I subsume the world to my own projects, never seeing the world as having an independent life that holds out a hope of something new (the possibility of metaphysical desire, mentioned above, being fulfilled). As it turns out, there is more going on than making other same. Levinas presented particular states of “language” and “being” which precede actual language and sense-making associated with making other same. To describe this preceding language Levinas presented two distinctions: “saying” versus “said” and “the sensible” versus “the sign.” Levinas taught that each of us uses words all the time to signal about the reality around us. This is “the said”: language used to fit the new into the old. But, prior to “the said” there is “the saying.” “The saying” signals that, just before language congeals into words (the said), there is this moment of expansiveness and openness to all possibilities (the saying). Possibilities may be reduced to the words each of us finally utters (the said) but the saying is also “real” and available to us if each of us allows our individual selves to notice it. This noticing is fleeting; language immediately introduces the reduction into known concepts (the said). But, and this is important, the reality of the saying is not, thereby eliminated. It has a presence if each of us allows ourselves to be available to it. When we are available, the solidity of our knowing is challenged and made less stable and sure. This openness enables us to become available to our not-knowing and draws us into a humble relationship to the world around us. In this humility lies the beginning of an ethical life. (Ethics is central to a practice of freedom and of imagination as will be explored in the chapters devoted to these domains, but ethics is also central to our experience of identity, of time, of creativity, and more, areas also explored in this book.) The same may be said of the senses. There are “the signs” (words) each of us uses to identify sensory experiences (such as to see specific things, to hear specific

Language and Experience

17

sounds, to sense the passage of time, to taste specific tastes, and so forth). But there is also “the sensible” which precedes the congealing of experience into signs. Each of us may notice a color and assign the sign “green” to this “color” (“color” being, ironically, also a sign). However, just before this moment of assigning, this “color” has individual subtleties and life that cannot be spoken for by the sign “green.” These, too, are part of this color that is, now, made “green” through the sign “green.” The sign “green” shears away from the being of this color that which the sign “green” cannot grasp. But each of us can notice this moment of potential and reality (the sensible) that is not spoken for by “the sign” used to assign the color a place in our individual worlds. As with “the saying” moments, these “sensible” moments are available to each of us if we allow ourselves to notice them. In summary, “saying” precedes “said” and “the sensible” precedes “the sign.” Both are aspects of experience but precede language. In this way, in my estimation, Levinas succeeded moving language into experience. In a similar fashion, I encourage reading “beyond words” and ask you to consider, over and over, the question “What does this feel like?” rather than “What does this mean?” in order to provide the possibility of having an experience which is more than the language used to signal the experience. Stand before the words, not as words describing the world but as meaning unto themselves (sonority, visibleness on the page surrounded by other words, portending a world outside the text that is a fully lived world in all dimensions). Confront your experience of whatever is your concern, as if you knew nothing of it and were encountering it for the first time. Try to “see” it with no words. In this, language is confronted and understanding is not the parsing of words and structures into analogues already known but entering “into” reading as immediate experiences of the world (saying and sensibility of the world). There is one last necessary discussion about the book to address the problematics of such a book: how to structure something that is supposed to be mosaical.

Structuring a Mosaical Book There is no starting place in looking at a mosaic. It matters not where you start or where you “finish.” In one way or another you can take in the whole of the mosaic, only you do this in your own order and your own predilections rule how you do this. Given the stated themes of this book, as the elements of the ideas are distributed throughout the text, repeated, amplified in specific ways, brought together in different assemblages so, too, there is the one “larger” mosaic, the whole of the book itself. This issue of order arose many years ago. Presenting a poster session on field research I had done (Blumenfeld-Jones, 1994), with three classroom teachers’ ideas of the relationship between pleasure, authority, education, grounded in cultural models theory, I had organized the board to present the teachers’ nested cultural models of pleasure, education, and authority. A viewer came to look at the board. He asked, “Does it matter where I start?” Taken aback at first (because I did have a kind of “flow” with a beginning and end to the display), I responded, “No, start wherever

18

2 Mosaical Thinking and Curriculum Theory

you want.” I suddenly knew, with his question, that, in fact, it didn’t matter where he started, that assumptions were unnecessary for making sense of the display and that there might be more than one sense made of it. He could assemble and reassemble the ideas in whatever ways made sense to him. He would make his own understanding anyway, even if I had stipulated a starting place. And this he did, as he “roamed” through the materials on the board through his own logic. This book might be seen in just the same way. The chapters and specific ideas of this book might be seen as infinitely re-organizable elements, which can be assembled in various ways to produce different images or meanings. Each chapter can be seen as a mosaic of ideas. Across “chapters” there are connections to be made, but the order of those connections and the possibility of unforeseen connections can inform the reading and the possibility of new images not foreseen. This book is an invitation to think and rethink our Curriculum Studies and Theory practices both in terms of ideas and in terms of how we think about our practice of theorizing and practical thinking and action. As such, rethinking the book through different ways of reading makes sense. It also offers the possibility of renewal. For “mosaical structure” the structure of “book” is a problem. Books present texts in a linear fashion, one chapter after another. Each individual chapter is also linearly presented, one page after another. Such an organization implies that each preceding item justifies those items which follow. The earlier parts are the building blocks of the argument, laid out in a logical arrangement, leading to the conclusions. We supposedly discern the meaning of the text through its unfolding argument and developing logic. Given that the concept of “mosaic” is not linear but “all at once,” one certainly must acknowledge that when we look at the mosaic we inevitably and necessarily start to look at a mosaic in a discrete section of the mosaic (such is the structure of visual perception). Having to use a linear structure to present a mosaical structure places some stress upon the actual presentation of the ideas, materials, and experiences in this book. There is no “solution” to this “problem” except to believe that the book has an open structure.

The Scholarly Life: Raising Questions, Too Many Answers In the end, the point of this book is the raising of questions, not answering them. This book is offered as a provocation to the field of Curriculum Studies. But this is not for purposes of sheer provocation. This isn’t a game. As I note, in my essay “The violence of words, words of violence: Keeping the uncomfortable at bay, a Jewish Perspective,” (2016) that work, and this present work, represent my life. They are not lightly shared. This book is a challenge to our field to think again (in the spirit of currere) forward, backward, and in the present. I do fear for our field. I fear for our world. I fear we will be too late, perhaps already are, to begin to re-make this world in ways that draw us together in the one world we really are. In this book, I only hope to begin a process, not to provide a blueprint for building the building. So, I write: raising questions, too many answers, all of them something to consider,

The Scholarly Life: Raising Questions, Too Many Answers

19

none of them wrong, none of them right, a confusion of possibilities. The best of a scholarly life.

References Blumenfeld-Jones, D. (1994, April). A cultural models approach to teacher thinking: A Focus on Learning and Pleasure. Presented at AERA. Blumenfeld-Jones, D. S. (2016). The violence of words, words of violence: Keeping the uncomfortable at bay, a Jewish Perspective. In Is Curriculum Studies a Protestant Project?: A Jew and some Protestants Walked into a Bar, in Journal of Curriculum Theorizing. (Special Section, Editor: Donald S. Blumenfeld-Jones), pp. 4–12. Derrida, J. (1978). Violence and metaphysics. In Writing and Difference. (Trans. Allan Bass). Taylor and Francis, pp. 97–192. Habermas, J. (1971). Knowledge and human interests. (Trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro). Beacon Press. Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority. (Trans. Alphonso Lingis). Duquesne University. Levinas, E. (1998). Otherwise than being or beyond essence. (Trans. Alphonso Lingis). Duquesne University. Pinar, W. F. (2012). What is curriculum theory (2nd ed.). Taylor and Francis.

Chapter 3

Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom

Abstract This chapter offers a way to reimagine Curriculum Studies through selfcritique in the form of dialectical unlearning. The history of Curriculum Studies self-critique is laid out, including critiques offered by Alice Miel, Joseph Schwab, James B. Macdonald, and David Purpel. The emphasis is on the need for reimagining and critical self-critique in order for the field to not be caught in ideological cul-desacs. Discussions of ideology (Mannheim, Luckmann & Berger) and habitus (Pierre Bourdieu) are followed by discussions and details of what it means to be “critical” through the thinking of Jürgen Habermas and the author’s analysis of the idea of being critical. Following this the twinned ideas of dialectics and unlearning are presented as the basis for reimagining and critical self-critique that affords new ways to understand ourselves and our field. [In the first chapter to this book (“The Illness of Our World: A Critique of Curriculum Studies”) some concerns about the field are laid out, characterized as “a frozen world, perhaps a dead world.” Thoughts are presented as to how we might “elasticize our thinking past the binaries” such as that of science vs. art and how we are caught within frames that constrict our understanding of the wholeness of the world. One of those frames is the concept and practice of being critical. It is clear that many Curriculum Studies scholars see themselves as critical scholars. However, it is an open question as to what is meant by this term. It appears to be a term used to signal a politics of the left. In this sense, the term is not dissimilar to the term “moral” in the 1980s political movement “the moral majority.” David Purpel (Purpel, D. & McLaurin, Jr., W. (2004) pointed out that the political right co-opted this term, arrogating morality to themselves alone, leaving those not of their persuasion lacking morality. They attacked schools as promoting a leftist morality they found offensive. Ironically, Purpel pointed out, while this assertion was false, the political right had done the education community a service by pointing to the pervasive moral character of education. Purpel intended to retrieve this term from the political right and apply it broadly to education, exploring the contours of a moral approach to thinking about curriculum that is about something fundamental to the human condition. In similar fashion, it is important to retrieve “critical” from its co-opting by the left in order to understand what it means, at a basic level, to be critical, extending the capacity to “be critical” to all phases and persuasions in Curriculum Studies. Such a discussion invites all Curriculum Studies scholars, no matter their position, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 D. S. Blumenfeld-Jones, Reimagining Curriculum Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9877-4_3

21

22

3 Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom

to participate in a deeper understanding of “critical” without recourse to particular political outcomes. In this chapter this end is pursued by discussing the tradition of Curriculum Studies field self-critique, analyzing the term critical to better understand its contours, and presenting two conjoined ways of being critical (dialectics and unlearning) as dispositions through which we can make sense of reality without recourse to the balkanization of thinking that presently continues to plague our field. This work represents one dimension of the process of reimagination.]

Self-Critique in the Field of Curriculum Studies … the problem … about curriculum change …[is to] persuade people to give up … what was once a good arrangement long after it has ceased to serve any useful purpose … [This is] the commonest form of crystallization. Alice Miel (1946/1978, p. 527) … the field of curriculum is moribund. Joseph Schwab (1969, p. 1) [W]e are traveling down a superhighway at faster and faster speeds looking out the rearview mirror. [Lawrence] Kohlberg and [Rochelle] Mayer’s three ideologies [of curriculum] are ‘over the hill’… but the political view is in the [rearview] mirror. It does provide us with some idea of how straight the road is ahead provided our speed does not exceed our reaction time. What we need is some way to look beyond, if only a few feet. James B. Macdonald (1995, p. 73) [C]urriculum studies is in a queasy state of reorientation. [It] has … become a kind of homeless adventurer… on a journey to explore the world for new understanding. The effect has been enrichment on one side … and impoverishment on the other … The question we face now is whether we are now prepared to make a home again. Peter Hlebowitsh (2010, p. 505) An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. “Can they be brought together?” This is a practical question. We must get down to it. “I despise intelligence” really means: “I cannot bear my doubts.” —Albert Camus

The above four curriculum epigrams, ranging from 1946 to 2010, present a pattern of practice within Curriculum Studies: regular self-critique for the purpose of moving the field out of its stasis. What counts as “stasis” is of less importance, for purposes of this present work, than the fact that the field seems to periodically critique itself. This book, overall, is dedicated to the proposition that we are, once again, in need of such self-critique. The fifth epigram epitomizes self-critique: to be able to bear one’s self-doubts and be always open to watching one’s thought for the purpose of rethinking what one thought was “true.” The above scholars all voice such a capacity and form the core of this practice. My initial response to the above scholars varies. As with Miel, I see us in a state of crystallization that I hope can be gotten to move again. Unlike Schwab, I think we are not “moribund” and have a great deal to do. As with Macdonald, I’m concerned we’re caught in narrow avenues that conceal the wider possibilities around us. Unlike Hlebowitsh, I am not interested in coalescing the field around some agreed

Self-Critique in the Field of Curriculum Studies

23

upon center. I think this would only result in perpetuating ongoing power struggles between factions. And, with Camus, his aphorism “[a]n intellectual... whose mind watches itself” is a powerful, head-spinning idea that embodies true criticality. I must make one statement at the outset: to be critical does not mean to be tied to a particular politics. Politics and criticality, using Camus’ words, entertain doubts, not certainties. Unlike some, I am not interested in saying what self-critique should produce, only that if we are caught in yet another moment of stasis, we need to act.

Curriculum Studies Self-Critique: A Short History When I entered the field in 1986, I entered a field that had undergone many shifts and changes. In the early twentieth century founding years, starting with Franklin Bobbitt, W. W. Charters, and David Snedden, all of whom adopted Franklin Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management, Curriculum Studies (not called that at the time but only “curriculum”) was primarily a progressivist technical-rational field grounded in the progressivist idea that science would be the basis for a good, rational curriculum for the improvement of society. We may not, today, call what they did “science” or progressive but, at the time, it was considered to be science by many and was part of a larger social movement seeking social change and labeling itself progressivism. At the same time as Bobbitt, Charters, and Snedden did their work, John Dewey, also a progressivist, although not grounded in science per se but still believing in the power of reason to give direction and structure to education, offered a different vision of how to organize education and the curriculum. Dewey wanted to provide a sound philosophical basis for his vision of progressive education (laid out perhaps most clearly in Dewey’s last education book, Experience and Education, 1939). Dewey’s ideas were taken, much against his desires, in the direction of project-based curriculum that was driven by children’s interests rather than children’s questions (Dewey, 1897, 2002). The technical-rational approach that had begun with Bobbitt, Charters and Snedden, remained dominant for many decades, reaching its apogee with Ralph Tyler’s, 1949 book Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (1949), with Tyler followers applying his ideas in multiple ways for many years thereafter. In 1969 Joseph Schwab delivered a critique of the field. Schwab, as is well-known, accused the field of being “moribund,” thoroughly theoretical and lacking the means of being what he thought it was: a field of practical actions, not theory. He was, I think, clearly referring to Tyler, whose book is a highly theoretical work divorced from how people actually design curricula (see Decker Walker’s insightful essay “A Naturalistic Model for Curriculum Development” [1971/2002] for a critique of Tyler, averring that when Walker went to look for examples of Tyler’s process in actual curriculum development settings, he couldn’t find any). Schwab may also have been referencing the emerging Curriculum Theory field being pursued by James B. Macdonald, Dwayne Huebner, and Ted Aoki. By the time I discovered the field I witnessed the ongoing but, initially, subtle shift from the edges of the field that would soon displace the status quo. What

24

3 Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom

was that status quo? It was Tyler’s technocratic, linear, rational ideas. (Schwab’s ideas of practicality and deliberation had been offered as a powerful antidote to Tyler as the basis for curriculum thinking and making but was never really able to displace Tyler.) Tylerian ideas continued to dominate professional organizations (both ASCD, Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development, and AERA, the American Education Research Association’s Division B, Curriculum Studies). Schools, without actually knowing Tyler’s work, treated curriculum work as a set of rigid technical practices. What was this seismic shift then? It came from the abovementioned Curriculum Theory group that split from Tyler and responded to Schwab’s accusation (that the field was “moribund” and that professors of curriculum should probably find other employment) by moving in multiple new directions that enlivened the field. These multiple directions presented an ecumenical fracturing of interests. That is, under one “roof” there co-existed very different new ways of understanding and practicing curriculum. Out of James Macdonald, Dwayne Huebner, and Ted Aoki, leaders of the infusion of non-education ideas and scholars into the field, there followed many more multiple persuasions. Many of these were brought together in William Pinar’s seminal work Curriculum Theorizing: The Reconceptualists (1975). Pinar had created a journal (Journal of Curriculum Theorizing) and a conference at University of Rochester several years before, opening the field to multiple voices, perspectives, and resources. That conference morphed, eventually, into the Bergamo Conference of Curriculum Theorizing and Classroom Practice. When I attended my first Bergamo conference, in 1986, at the urging of David Purpel, I found a field open to fluidity, always unsure of who we were, and supporting a sense of experimentation and ecumenicism that could embrace disparate directions, including aesthetics, narrative inquiry, psychoanalysis, Buddhism, Marxism, feminism, witchcraft, poetry, spirituality, and much more. This was home to me, who had come from a dance tradition that took nothing for granted and was always looking for new “answers” to eternal questions, that would never simply answer a question but would raise new questions amid the so-called answer. James B. Macdonald, for me, became a lodestone for such restless exploration and invention. Looking now at his collected essays (1995), I find that he was constantly critically rethinking Curriculum Studies, concerned not only with schools, teachers, and learners but with new ways to think about curriculum. In a sense, Macdonald is the model of constant critical field critique. Since Schwab and Macdonald there have been other Curriculum Studies field critiques. There are those who continued to be interested in curriculum development which had been the origination of the field with Bobbitt, Charters, Snedden and, later, Tyler. People like Peter Hlebowitsh and William Wraga critiqued the reconceptualist movement as esoteric and removed from education and curriculum, wanting to return us to a school-problems-based approach. James Henderson and Kathleen Kesson also felt that curriculum development as a field of theorizing and practice had been abandoned and they sought to emphasize ways in which democracy, as the fundamental value of the U.S. (and the fundamental value of John Dewey), needed to be made central to the theory and practice of curriculum development. These two cases occupy what I would call the “particularist” field critique, focused more

Self-Critique in the Field of Curriculum Studies

25

on promoting a particular concern (curriculum development and schools orientation, democracy) rather than addressing the field in a way that might aid everyone (themselves included) in becoming much more self-aware as to their practice. There are those, such as Erik Malewski, who saw a moment to shift the field. Malewski, in 2006, sponsored a conference at Purdue University, “Articulating (Present) Next Moments in Curriculum Studies: The Post-Reconceptualist Generation(s).” This conference became a book, Curriculum Studies Handbook: The Next Moment (2010). Malewski was engaged in an “effort to delineate the shift toward post-reconceptualization of curriculum studies” (p. xi). Unlike Pinar’s Reconceptualists book, Malewski’s conference and book failed to shift the field. Perhaps it had already shifted or, perhaps, it was so fragmented that there was no singular “next moment.” It is difficult to say. It seemed apparent that no one new galvanizing energy was moving forward but, as Hlebowitsh noted, a kind of chaos of interests and concerns with little cohesion dominated. There was a shift occurring, although not immediately apparent. It was toward an almost exclusive focus on the intersection of social justice and curriculum. Exemplary of this was what occurred in the formation of a new conference and subsequent journal. A small group of Bergamo attendees had been unhappy with the lack of “classroom practice” representation at the conference. They began a new conference, “Curriculum and Pedagogy,” dedicated to bringing practitioners into the Curriculum Studies conversation. But within a few years this conference shifted into, almost exclusively, an array of social justice conversations. This conference which had initially attempted a shift in the conversation toward a particular direction (classroom practice) became re-directed in a different particularist direction (social justice and cultural studies). Today, Curriculum Studies, in both a plurality of its major publications (JCT and Curriculum Inquiry) and conferences (AERA, Bergamo), is dominated by social justice and cultural studies concerns. On the other side of such self-critique, Miel, Schwab, Macdonald, and Purpel seem to have the ability to perform what can be termed self-critique in a more “global” manner. That is, first, they were not telling people what not to do (don’t engage in radical politics that make you irrelevant to schools, do not abandon democracy) or what to do (do focus on social justice issues). Second, unlike the shifts or attempted shifts (Malewski toward “the next moment,” the attempt to revive classroom practice talk, focus on social justice) which were interested in becoming the new center of the field, these scholars were not suggesting, much less dictating a particular direction. Miel (discussed in more detail below) only asked curriculum thinkers to consider what in them had become crystallized. Schwab only asked curriculum thinkers to consider the domain of daily problems, without specifying what problems counted as being worthy of consideration or creating a technique of how to address them. Macdonald and Purpel’s final joint publication (1987) offered a set of ideas (pay attention to the platforms we use to think about curriculum, attend to transcendent reality, evil, the human aspiration for affirmation and hope, all with liberation as the goal) to guide thinking about curriculum in whatever direction you wanted to take your inquiry. They offered these not as a checklist, but as broad ideas that might be interpreted in multiple ways. What constitutes transcendent reality, evil and affirmation, hope, and liberation are not particularized. As in this present book, in

26

3 Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom

which freedom (liberation) will feature strongly throughout, there are many images of liberation, of freedom. While there will be offered, in Chapter 5, Freedom All Too Human, a detailed “take” on freedom through exploring the work of Martin Buber, there will also be efforts to show the many domains in which freedom might be practiced (imagination, gender politics, identity) and ways in which we might practice freedom without mandating that these are the ways to practice freedom or providing a set of recipes for so doing. Where are we now in terms of crystallization? Today’s Curriculum Studies community appears to have become crystallized around social justice. There is nothing wrong with such a focus. However, it appears to have become our new orthodoxy (curriculum development being our previous orthodoxy). This book is continuing a tradition that points to the ways in which, as we move from one focus to another (curriculum development to reconceptualization to, now, social justice) we lack the capacity to critically self-critique our own practices (the term “critical” to be elaborated later in this chapter). Social justice is but our new “truth” that excludes considering any other foci. To the degree that this entire book is devoted to shaking certainty, this new “truth” of social justice, no less than any other “truth,” needs the capacity for critical self-critique and an ironic eye toward its own status. In so doing, the need for surpassing the constant tendency of people to become rigid in their thinking and actions is addressed. Each of the chapters is an attempt to reimagine an important feature of the field: freedom, imagination, time, identity, patriarchy. This chapter, however, is dedicated to forwarding a way of doing that reimagining, that surpassing of rigidity, a way of critical self-critique.

Moribund in a New Key: Global Self-Critique Here, let us look in more detail at three notable moments (Miel, Schwab, Macdonald), already mentioned, of self-critique of the Curriculum Studies field. These critiques are still applicable today. They, thus, can carry forward the critique I am making. Alice Miel’s field critique (1946/1978) predated Joseph Schwab’s (1969) more well-known critique by 23 years. In Miel’s essay, she laid out a history of education thinking in which, educators “cling to what was once a good arrangement long after it has ceased to serve any useful purpose” (p. 527). She found that educators had reached points “when an idea or habit is accepted uncritically, so that it limits the integrity, autonomy, and opportunities for self-expression of individuals and groups.” She labeled such “clinging” as “crystallization.” She sought for curriculum scholars to reconsider their attachments to their ideas, not so much to necessarily jettison them but to see in what ways their attachments were holding them back from new understandings hidden by their attachments to what had become articles of faith. Social justice may be an important dimension of our work, but is it the only dimension we should pursue? In this sense, it has become crystallized as the central truth driving our work. Those outside its boundaries are marginalized in multiple ways.

Self-Critique in the Field of Curriculum Studies

27

As already noted, in 1969 Joseph Schwab published his now infamous critique of the field, “The Practical: A Language for Curriculum.” He called the field “moribund” and lost. He asserted that the field had become wholly theoretical and out of touch with its origins of being a practical field for improving education. He felt the field had become only interested in identifying principles and developing knowledge rather than on determining what action to take and how to take it based on addressing specific education problems requiring concrete education programs. George Posner (1994) supported Schwab in this analysis but took it one step further. Posner pointed out that in identifying problems we might take to be curriculum problems, we are functioning from unexamined assumptions. When Max van Manen (1977) critiqued Schwab, van Manen noted that curriculum people tended to talk from unexamined positions and lacked self-understanding. Without such self-examination curriculum thinkers/actors were likely to simply repeat what they already knew. Posner’s observation (admittedly cast in a technical-rational manner as simply an obstacle to be overcome) and van Manen’s deeper salient critique of Schwab seem a continuation of Miel’s observation of crystallization. Their calls for self-understanding are still pertinent today. Five years after Schwab, James Macdonald, in his 1974 seminal work, “A Transcendental Developmental Ideology of Education” (Macdonald, 1995a), continued the practice of self-critique of the field. He laid out the terrain of the time, describing Kohlberg’s and Mayer’s typology of education theory: romantic ideology connected with the freeschool movements and progressivism, cultural transmission ideology connected with traditional schooling, and developmental theory connected with a Piagetian framework. To this triumvirate Macdonald added radical ideology connected with Freire. Macdonald critiqued all four ideologies as inadequate. The romantic ideology and developmental ideology were fixated on a purely psychological understanding of the human and, as such, were inadequate accountings of the wholeness of humanness. The cultural transmission ideology was mired in the past in a way that could not account for the errors of the past. Macdonald offered his strongest critiques for the radical/political ideology. He wrote that, while there was much to admire in this ideology and it did reveal many fractures within our society (and consequently within education as well), it was fairly deterministic. The radical point of view … posits that the way people live together is determined essentially by the structure of our economic arrangements, the ownership of means of production, and the distribution of goods and services through the possession of power.… The radical view … does provide us with a historical analysis … Yet I find this historical view limiting in its materialistic focus … It is a “social science” of human relations and a “science” of history … [which] does not adequately allow for the tacit dimension of culture. (pp. 178–179)

“Tacit dimension,” an idea forwarded by Michael Polanyi in his books Personal Knowledge (1962) and The Tacit Dimension (1966), presented the notion that we always know more than we can tell. He illustrated this, referencing a psychological experiment. If you show a person a photograph of a massive crowd and ask the viewer to pick out her or his mother in that throng, the person will unerringly be able to find her/his mother. If asked how s/he did it, the person will be unable to explain. S/he just knows. This tacit dimension of knowledge is always at work in our minds and actions. Further, what we do not know is more powerful than that

28

3 Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom

to which we can consciously attest. As a driver of our decisions and actions, tacit knowledge must be taken into account in considering who we are as well as how we are living, deciding, and acting. Macdonald extended the tacit dimension, a moreor-less psychological concept, to culture. In so doing, Macdonald offered a way to step away from the spell of what guides us without our noticing. Macdonald’s use of the term ideology, when connected to the tacit dimension of culture, registers a central figure in our problem: the notion of an overarching, yet unseen, tacit life representing unquestioned orthodoxies which may fairly be named “ideology” or, as Pierre Bourdieu names it, “habitus” (discussed in detail below). Polanyi’s ideas suggest that uncovering and confronting the tacit character of ideology or habitus takes more than intellectual reasoning and investigation. Returning to Macdonald’s critiques, he summarized his concerns with all four ideologies as follows: My problem with the radical or political view of curriculum is not its level of analysis or the questions that it asks, per se; instead, it is the feeling I have that it is also [along with Kohlberg’s and Mayer’s thinking] one step behind the world. Thus, I feel that, as McLuhan once said, we are traveling down a superhighway at faster and faster speeds looking out the rearview mirror. Kohlberg and Mayer’s three ideologies are “over the hill„” so to speak, but the political view is in the mirror. It does provide us with some idea of how straight the road is ahead provided our speed does not exceed our reaction time. What we need is some way to look beyond, if only a few feet. (p. 179)

Macdonald’s point was amplified thirteen years later in his and David Purpel’s essay (1987) in which they felt that the political/radical critique of education might actually be comfortable with Tylerian curriculum processes as “it is not clear either historically or critically whether the rejection of Tylerism is based on its essential character or on the fact that it serves the wrong master” (p. 181). It is not clear that Macdonald’s and Purpel’s critique is any less true today. There is little exploration of alternative ways of thinking about curriculum except to get its content right. Certainly, there is some (chaos theory introduced and developed by Bill Doll is one (Doll, 2012; Doll & Gough, 2012) but, for the most part, the problems are put on what is taught. Further, if we analyze Tylerism as a form of masculine behavior (favoring of reason, reliance on technological thinking, little attention to emotion or body as guides to knowing or planning), then we will find that not much has changed in that regard either. I wrote of gender in a 2022 chapter as follows: Our community’s present almost exclusive concern with social justice … shares the continuing dominant cultural bent of a masculinized life and a quasi-Protestant culture which has violence built into it … marked by a millennia old valuing of mind over body, rationality/logic over emotion and theoretical discourse all of which … is culturally assigned a masculine character … a masculinity of righteousness, positioning people as friends and enemies … and a strident insistence on the correctness of their position that permits no dissent from the discourse. (2022, p. 158)

It is not clear that we have departed from a patronizing intellectual power structure that has dominated the field from the beginning. Not only do we continue to function from unexamined assumptions and categories which may import the kinds of unnoticed difficulties outlined above. As a field we

Self-Critique in the Field of Curriculum Studies

29

are functioning from unproven assumptions, such as: identity speaks nearly fully for the whole of a person or schools are a central location for redressing social ills. As with Macdonald and, later Macdonald and Purpel, it is possible that the social justice ideology (today’s version of Macdonald’s political/radical ideology) continues to function from a materialistic perspective as both identity and culture are treated as material facts rather than as social relations. Further, there continues to be a desire to adjust the distribution of opportunity, goods, and services without questioning the concepts of “adjustment” or the value of those opportunities, goods, and services. And particular communities want their knowledge infused into the curriculum. But in this desire do they want to teach “all” of the communities’ histories and actions, some of which are problematic? In sum, it is clear that people have been treated inequitably based on race, gender, ethnicity, ability, sexual orientation, and the like and that such groups have been denied fair access to what is assumed to be valuable. However, such a focus hides from us our unquestioning acceptance of this world to which people seek entrance. For all these domains, do we ever ask if the way we want our world to become is the way we really want it? We simply assume that our calls for change constitute the very basis of how we should live together and that we are not living up to the ideals of our society. Those ideals tend to be summarized in calls for greater participation. But, to what end? Often those ends are couched in the language of justice and freedom. But we do not question what we mean by justice or freedom and, thus, we are not aware of what they might be, were they achieved. In short, we have not turned a critical eye upon our founding axioms, our ideology. As Camus stated, “I cannot bear my doubts” so this chapter begins to lay out how to doubt, how to enact self-critique as called for by Miel, Macdonald, and Purpel, a self-critique which, I assert, we must employ repeatedly in order to keep checking on ourselves and our always potential for “crystallization.”

Being Critical The underlying assertion of this chapter is: we are not being critical. It is time to understand what is meant by being critical.

Founding Axioms, Orthodoxy, and Ideology In the above section the focus was on the idea that our founding axioms as orthodoxies go uninterrogated. Chris Argyris (Argyris et al., 1985) has theorized this dilemma. He asserts that all life is practiced through theories we hold about the way the world works. He terms our conscious theories (our founding axioms) “espoused theories.” (Consciousness itself is more robustly defined in the Introduction as well as in Chapter 8, “Identity, Self, and Liberation” and Chapter 9, “Reimagining Time.”) These founding axioms (such as ideas about freedom, justice, fairness, gender, race,

30

3 Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom

curriculum, and so forth) often become our orthodoxies for determining how we will or should act. They are unquestionable as to their correctness and go unchallenged. When challenged, they are often upheld as the ground state for how to understand the world. In short, they appear immutable. Argyris asserts, however, that when we examine our actions in the world, we find they reflect an alternative set of theories (which he terms “theories-in-use”) which are motivating our actions and are, in some cases and to some degree, at variance with what we espoused. In confronting this discordance with what we thought, we may find we agree with those we had rejected. And/or, we may find that while we hold to our espoused theories, there are other theories which now have some merit that was unseen when we held to our founding axioms as orthodoxies. Lastly, we may find that our unseen structures of consciousness challenge our founding axioms, calling those axioms into question. They are, suddenly, not orthodoxies. We may undergo a shift toward a more ecumenical understanding of the world. Another name for “theories-in use” is ideology. We live our lives from within our ideologies. No one is immune from living ideologically. Being critical requires us to confront our ideologies and decenter our axioms and orthodoxies so that we may more fully understand the multifarious viewpoints and actions that exist in our world. That is what, at base, Miel, Schwab, Macdonald, and Purpel demanded of us: to confront ourselves, to challenge what had become written in stone as if it was eternal. To begin to understand, challenge, and even embrace the ideologies that drive us, we must learn how to examine them, critique them, understand the structure of ideologies, see where they are at variance with our espoused theories and begin to confront what it is we really want of our world. In short, we must learn to become critical of our own selves. To begin the practice of such self-critique we must understand “ideology” in more depth. What is meant by ideology? By ideology I mean: a coordinated set of beliefs which, taken together, inform a person how to view and interact with material and immaterial reality. These beliefs are grounded in what Thomas Luckmann and Peter Berger characterized as the social construction of reality (2012) which we learn from within our communities. Our founding axioms are our internalized, unnoticed ideologies, what Karl Mannheim (1936) described as the “[i]deology of an age or of a concrete historico-social group, e.g., of a class... the characteristics and composition of the total structure of the mind or this epoch or of this group” (p. 56). “The total structure of the mind” indicates that ideology is inescapable and global for the person. There is no place s/he can cast her/his attention that is not interpreted through her/his ideology. This ideology, described by Luckmann and Berger, is: [m]an’s [sic] self-production. [It] is always … a social enterprise. Men together produce a human environment, with the totality of its socio-cultural and psychological formations … it is impossible for man in isolation to produce a human environment. (p. 51)

Ideology is not an individual’s invention, and it is the “totality” of existence. This totality of “socio-cultural and psychological formations” does not exist solely in the mind. Pierre Bourdieu’s image of founding axioms/total ideology is grounded in his notion of habitus, the embodied life of culture that works at “levels” below awareness.

Being Critical

31

Presenting this idea in some detail reveals just how obdurate and powerful is ideology made bodily. This will reveal how difficult and non-obvious are the possibilities for confronting ourselves. Bourdieu (1977) describes habitus as follows: The structures constitutive of a particular type of environment (e.g. the material conditions of existence characteristic of a class condition) produce habitus, systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles of the generation and structuring of practices and representations which can be objectively “regulated” and “regular” without in any way being the product of obedience to rules, objectively adapted to their goals without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary to attain them and, being all this, collectively orchestrated without being the product of the orchestrating action of a conductor. (p. 72)

Taking this apart can reveal how ideology as conceived by Mannheim and social reality construction as conceived by Luckmann and Berger are deeply embedded in our physical/psychological selves. While this excursus of Bourdieu will be offered one piece at a time, the meaning of this long, long sentence exists within the synergy and constant reinforcement of each element by each other element. That is, this stream of relations, as lived experience, is “all at once” rather than “one piece at a time.” Bourdieu begins by stipulating a “particular type of environment” such as how a social class lives its life within particular social structures that define the class’s experiences and activities. This environment does not define the ensuing habitus, but it does set some conditions for the experience that produces that habitus. What is habitus itself? It is “systems of durable” (as in lasting over a long time or duration and difficult to change), “transposable” (you can live this habitus under many conditions in many circumstances that do not alter the habitus) “dispositions.” Dispositions reference the idea that we are disposed to act in regular, repetitive ways under many circumstances. Dispositions also reference that habitus is not a physical state so much as a bodily/psychological state. What are these dispositions? They are “structured structures,” that is they are highly organized dispositions that are like actual physical structures that also function to create new structures in their image (“function as structuring structures”). Habitus is something so general and generative that it can act as “principles of the generation and structuring of practices and representations.” That is, it can, in the face of novel situations, generate new practices that maintain the contours of the originating habitus and generate ways of representing the “new” practices that make them the same practices on the inside even though outwardly the practices may appear different from previous practices. These generated practices and representations are “regulated” and “regular” (making them predictable and recognizable) “without in any way being the product of obedience to rules.” That is, they do not appear to be robotic but natural and taken-for-granted as being the right way to act and be, even when the social practices seem to be “new.” Habitus is flexible and invisible: “objectively adapted to their goals without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends.” Lastly, habitus is “collectively orchestrated without being the product of the orchestrating action of a conductor.” That is, habitus is not

32

3 Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom

a singular product of an individual’s actions in the world but, rather, the collective production of a group without there being anyone who appears to be in charge of the social life. Even “the most influential” member of a group is a possessor of the self-same habitus as the “least influential” member of the group. In this sense, they are both the same, possessing the identical understanding of how their social world is organized and agreeing to live within the confines of the habitus that is that world without in any way recognizing that they are living within those common confines. What does this look like in Curriculum Studies? In much of contemporary Curriculum Studies, we take for granted what are considered social “realities” or facts: “class,” “gender,” “race,” “ethnicity,” “ability,” “age,” and others just as we had focused on “objectives” and “content” and timetables for delivering “knowledge.” All of these are taken as “objects” of the world that have physical meaning realities. Under the sign of ideology/habitus both the “old” categories (objectives, content, evaluation and so forth) and the “new” categories (class, race, and so forth) seem to describe physical realities (skin tone, sex, ideas considered empirical objects that can be measured, and so forth). But, they actually describe particular social relationships to social experiences in which the surfaces of the phenomena as seemingly physical situations(gender, race, logical sequences called objectives) become transformed into concrete meaningful ideas that are independent of our minds and social lives. We respond to them in ways that make them seem “natural”. (See R. Jacoby, 1975 for more on this naturalizing of the social.) We re-separate them from social agreements that are their origins; we make them into concrete realities. Ironically, they are seen to exist separate from our social agreements even though they are born from our social agreements. We talk about them as if we didn’t create them. But, these “things” are actually relationships which exist under particular ideological/habitus relations that make any particular interpretation of them seem sensible and reasonable. Their meanings differ from group to group, depending on these taken-for-granted relationships. They are externalized relationships treated as physical facts that go unexamined as to their “truth” value. In all cases they are seen as true to the degree that we have, within our group, agreed that they are true. They are not true in any absolute sense. The differing relations of different groups to these “facts” produce very different meanings of class, gender, race, educational objectives and so forth that can be found in the bodily ideologies (habiti) lived by each group. These very different meanings produce conflict between groups as each group understands the “facts” and sees a different world. As “structuring structures” they function for each group as generative structures for making sense of an unfolding world. The task at hand is how to address this deep ideology, how to learn to see ourselves, as best we can, through a critical lens that does not predict that certain outcomes are true, and others are false. How do we unpack and decrystallize our frozenness? This book offers multiple practices but the emphasis on imagination is central to all of them. If we cannot necessarily directly confront our habitus because it is so second nature and deeply bodily that we act and react without noticing how we act and react, so we must find ways around this reactivity. Through acts of wild and pure imagination (Chapters 4 and 6) we may attempt to skirt the blockages to noticing ourselves by not allowing reason to be our guide. An act or acts of imagination are

Being Critical

33

not merely the imagination pretending or playing at knowing your habitus in a direct manner (although play is important to acts of imagination as will be discussed in Chapter 4, to Hans-Georg Gadamer’s analysis of play). Imagination is a way around our blockages to confronting our doubts, our way around direct rational actions that only lead to confirmation of what is already dominating us. In short, we cannot reason our way out of our ideologies or habitus, nor can we confront them directly. We can encounter them but only through an openness to surprise and through practices of dialectical unlearning that are always inevitably critical. In the remainder of this chapter the attempt is to live in a way that requires a constant fluidity of attention, not wedded to particular conclusions or beliefs, but wedded to not knowing any absolutes. In this way we stay open to surprise that may serve to see past the habitus of our attention. Most importantly, as with all the practices explored in this book, it is to apply practices of imagination, freedom, dialectical unlearning, undermining of sure identities and living in a fluidity of time, to ourselves for purposes of questioning our founding axioms. In so doing, we can begin to take someone’s alternative interpretations as representing a “real” world we cannot see, and, thus, become open to the limitations of our own perspectives. This is what it means to “be critical.” But what is the act of being critical itself? It is to this question that I turn.

Perspectives on Being Critical I will begin with examining what it means to “think critically,” tracing Jurgen Habermas’ gloss on the word itself followed by my own gloss on the word. We will find that the word “critical” has multiple meanings which co-provide a mosaic of possibilities that do not, necessarily, cohere into a neat image. Following this, I will explore the idea of the dialectic as a location for shaking us into an awareness of our ideologies and habitus. And, lastly, I will explore the act of unlearning within the context of the dialectic.

Jürgen Habermas on the Word “Crisis” Jürgen Habermas (1992) pointed out that the word “critical” is underlain by the word “crisis.” He provided three meanings of “crisis,” that are suggestive of ways of developing criticality. First, there is a medical meaning of “crisis”: that phase of a disease in which it is decided whether the self-healing powers of the organism are sufficient for recovery.… the disease seems to be something objective … that … can be observed and … measured … The patient’s consciousness plays no part in this … Nevertheless … a crisis cannot be separated from the victim’s inner view. He [sic] experiences his impotence … [as] a subject doomed to passivity and temporarily unable to be a subject in full possession of his strength. (p. 282)

34

3 Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom

This image suggests that to “be in crisis” our very lives and the systems upon which our life relies (organs, brain, structures) must be compromised so that we might die. In this way we are said to be in “critical condition.” To address our assumptions, we must examine some objective facts of the structure of the world as we find it without prejudging the meanings of those facts. These facts are neither “good” nor “bad” which would already imply meanings before we have simply looked at the facts. They are only “things” to confront. These “things” have presented us with a society in upheaval and disagreement about what to do with them. We have arrived at a crisis point in which society’s existence or a culture’s existence is in jeopardy. We know this by the struggles occurring between groups within societies over what these facts might mean, their importance as facts, and the various actions we might take to have society survive in some form or other. Just as Habermas suggests that a person who is ill may experience all of this as a form of “doom,” a future about which one can do nothing, so, too, with society at a point of “critical condition” may be experienced as being on the precipice of doom and collapse. To be critical about our thinking means to bring all beliefs (especially our own) into the status of a crisis, accepting that our assumptions about the world, about goodness, about evil, about what we value may be entirely wrong, grounded in realities of which we had not been aware and which we might not wish to accept. We might find, for instance, that the ways in which we articulated our ideas are grounded in language that contradicts what we intended. Cristian Aquino-Sterling, in his work on the education scholarly literature addressing “No Child Left Behind,” finds that Michael Apple, of all people, addresses questions of accountability in a way that accepts the concept and possible practices of accountability. Apple writes (as found in Aquino-Sterling), the stress on reductive forms of accountability in NCLB . . . its emphasis [is] not on improvement (moving a child from a score of 20 to a score of 60) but on an arbitrary definition of adequate yearly progress [AYP] on these same tests, [this] can have the paradoxical effect of actually creating a situation in which ever more children are educated in institutions that have minimal if any forms of public accountability. (p. 110)

Aquino-Sterling writes that “[b]y using these adjectives (reductive and arbitrary), Apple opens the door to accountability practices that are not reductive.” That is, “[h]e is opening the door to the very standardization he seems to reject in other places.” He is not, according to Aquino-Sterling, questioning the value of accountability, only how it is being “measured” and used. As Aquino-Sterling has it, Apple does not advocate for the “reductive” forms of accountability employed in NCLB, but for “public” forms, yet he does not define what he actually means by “public accountability” in the article. Also … Apple is assuming that “improvement” by counting scores is also important. [He does so in other parts of his writing. – Ed.] He appears critical of Annual Yearly Progress [AYP], but not of the idea that one needs to measure improvement through scores. Apple does not specify if this improvement should be measured by scores on a standardized test or in other forms of assessment. (p. 139)

Given Michael Apple’s history and work, it comes as a surprise that he lets in, by the backdoor of language, that which we would expect him to reject altogether. This is

Being Critical

35

but one example in which the ideology/habitus shows the robustness of its influence. Recognizing this can bring us to ask ourselves what constitutes our actual values. Perhaps we value something we associate with “the other side” of a question, such as accountability. Confronting the shock of that recognition might place us in “critical condition,” in crisis, as we must consider what we have actually been thinking all along (but we were not aware of this). To “be critical” means to be willing to become unsettled ontologically, epistemologically, and/or ideologically. We must disallow our crystallized ideas their sustaining power over us by recognizing them buried in the language we use to bring the world into a particular view. Habermas presents a second understanding of “crisis” which he terms the “dramaturgical notion”: crisis signifies … a fateful process … contradiction is inherent in the very structure of the system of action … Fate is revealed in conflicting norms that destroy the identity of the characters unless they … manage to regain their freedom by smashing the mythical power of fate. (pp. 282–283)

Our whole system of thought could be seen as having the “mythical power of fate” as we take it almost an article of faith, for instance, that were we to adjust the distribution of access to opportunities, goods, and services, our society would become the society that abides by the values which we espouse. If we take this as the desired “fate” of the future, then we will be less willing to listen to those who have a different future which they find desirable. Think here, for instance, of Ivan Illich’s visions (1970/2002) of a “good society.” These have not “caught on” with the critical community. Indeed, his iconic “Deschooling Society” was met with such resistance that a whole book, with writers who could rightly be seen as political progressives, was published, decrying it (Gartner, 1973). But, if we accept that our version of the future may not be the only legitimate vision, then we must take notice of our critics who we may have previously dismissed. (There has been some effort to rehabilitate Illich for a new generation, but his work remains an outlier to mainstream critical educators.) Critics from the political right also have salient concerns that are not considered because they belong to the wrong group. Diane Ravitch (1990), before she was re-habilitated to the progressive left, wrote saliently about multicultural education having to do with how we build a cohesive society if we so strongly favor what might be tribal allegiances that we do not wish to unite with those not like ourselves. This is a contradiction within the multicultural education community but not well confronted. The progressive left wouldn’t consider her ideas because they came from the wrong particularist (Mannheim, 1936) ideology. The consequent struggles about these kinds of issues are actually struggles within ourselves as these are contradictions we actually each carry within ourselves but have marginalized some dimensions of ourselves in order to remain pure to the side we favor. By confronting such contradictions that are both internal and external we suffer the possibility of a crisis of thought. By considering that other perspectives might have some warrant, we meet the contradiction directly (the play of life being dramatically structured by such tensions between opposites), regaining freedom by grappling with the contradicting ideas and systems rather than ignoring them or rejecting them without consideration.

36

3 Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom

We “regain their freedom by smashing the mythical power of fate,” recognizing that our unexamined ideologies are not fated. Habermas points to a third image of crisis when he explores Marx’s concept of crisis. Marx was “the first to develop a sociological concept of system crisis”: “an economic crisis [is] a crisis-ridden process of economic growth... the economic system keeps creating new and more problems as it solves others” (p. 283). Our own systems of thoughts are in crisis if we acknowledge that they do not solve all our problems, that they are flawed, weak (diseased), in need of constant reconstruction in the face of new difficulties they themselves produce rather than believing the problems to be addressed are external to them and are adequately addressed by them. For instance, the call for free community college appears to make all of society equal. However, since wealth is still unevenly distributed, those who have wealth have more of it because they don’t have to pay for such education. Those who cannot afford community college are certainly helped, but they are still left behind in the wealth category. The wealth gap is increased, an unintended consequence of a progressivist idea. Such ideas must always be in question and must always be reconstructed. Even if we hold fast to our assumptions, we must admit to adjustments we must make as we perceive the ways in which our own actions have led us astray. Still, there is something more substantive than making practical adjustments to plans. We might confront how the systems we have in place, both in our minds and our actions, can become rigidified and applied in a reflexive way that takes no thought. We so rely on them that we do not see that we rely on them.

Being Critical: Its Cognates of “Radical” and “Root” Habermas provides ways to being critical, through understanding medical/dramaturgical/ systemic kinds of crises as models for our social crises. Such confrontations with crisis provide opportunities to be “critical” as our crises require responses. But how else can we understand how we might respond to the crises? One way is through describing another term we use for critical: “radical.” This term is usually applied to the political left as being “radicals.” What does the word “radical,” if looked at outside of this context, tell us about being critical? “Radical” is, among other possibilities, a mathematical term. In mathematics “radical” means the square root of a number. The square root is the most fundamental state of a number, no longer to be divided. What if we think about what it means to get at the root of something? To get at the root of something (to be a radical) can mean to get at the most basic components of our social life just as, in mathematics, we get at the most basic state of a number. Thinking of radical in this way, we can ask ourselves: are the categories of class, race, ethnicity, ability, and so forth the root components of our society? If they are not, then what might be? Some might identify our existential conditions (such as a desire for love, a concern for our children’s welfare, a worry about meeting basic needs, a desire for community) as the most basic (root) components of society. Some might say that the roots of society are

Being Critical

37

the rules and understandings of how we are in relationship to each other within the community as the most basic root of what makes a society. Overall, we can ask: what if we were to have conversations about what constitutes our society’s most basic roots rather than assuming our understanding of the roots of society to be correct? In such a conversation we might uncover legitimate disagreements that can force us to reconsider what we thought was basic or how different visions of “basic” may be connected to each other in complex ways. Trying to get to the root or roots of society does not, necessarily, stipulate that the roots are so basic that we cannot venture past them to still more subtle renderings. Indeed, we can only assert that we have described something that, at the moment, seems basic about society. It is important to understand that “basic,” in this case, describes a set of relations between “things” that are agreed upon points of attention. They are not a fixed physical reality that can no longer be divided. Even in physical material reality, as described in quantum physics, this reality, at its most subtle level, turns out to be both material and energy (which is not material). At any moment an “object” can be understood as “matter” (something solid) or as energy (wave of something insubstantial although quite “real”). As material reality at this physical level oscillates between matter and energy, so it is our relation to one or the other that “determines” what we “know” about that moment. What is the point of this brief physics excursus? That there is no “bottom” to the practice of social criticality such that we can get to the most basic description of social life beyond which we cannot venture. Just when we think we have done so, that “object” shifts into something else that is not part of the system we thought we had constructed. In the case of the categories of race, ethnicity, gender, and more, these are positions within a skein of relationships that while they appear to define structures of society, only do so through one approach to “roots.” In truth, while they are used to define each of us, they do not speak to the whole of us or of other ways of being in relationship. Thus, to say that contemporary society is at base (or root) racist is true from certain perspectives (the history of enslavement and making of Black Americans as less than human and, more generally, the making of non-whites as less than human), but society is more complex than that and there are ways in which we can slide through these categories to other states of being that may also be roots of our being. Roots of society are always complex. (See Chapter 8, “Reimagining Identity,” for a more fulsome exploration of identity.) “Root” has still another meaning, this time from the natural world. It references the plant root which brings nourishment to life. We then can ask of our ideas, beliefs, and so forth, what nourishes or would nourish them? What keeps them alive; what could jeopardize their existence? As with all of nature, what changes have our ideas, concepts, and practices undergone over the millennia as we adapt to changing circumstances? Treating them as “natural” phenomena, we can make sure we are attending to the need of the idea or practice or value, rather than having to control the idea or practice or value no matter the evidence it provides to the contrary as to what would make it flourish. Returning to the brief discussion of Diane Ravitch, if we admit to the contradiction of identity politics and unified community, how do we have a unified community within which we find various group experiences and ideas

38

3 Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom

of community? How do we attend to the conflicting ideas of these two views of society? We must examine the history of the idea. We must admit that all groups have imposed their own exclusivity ideas upon other groups, have taken their own way to be “the” way, have done heinous acts. We must see the fundamental contradiction within which we are living. This idea of “contradiction” will be explored, below, within the discussion of the dialectic. These ideas of roots present some ways of being self-critical. In seeing that there are different understandings of “roots” and that we are on a common journey to uncover roots, it is necessary to, for some period of time, say no to our own concepts, practices and/or ideology and entertain the opposite of these things that we had held to be true and correct. We must also accept, for some period of time, the opposite of our concepts, practices, or ideology for the purposes of understanding what might be revealed about our own ideas, concepts, practices, etc.. We might discover weaknesses in our own concepts, practices and/or ideologies as we entertain their opposites. We might come to notice something uncomfortable about our perspective that we had not previously noticed because we had not considered that different perspective. Perhaps we will find white supremacist or misogynist or racist tendencies in ourselves. To fail to be “critical” is to dismiss to the margins these oppositional ideas we do not like and hope we do not hold, just as we are being dismissed to the margins by people holding those oppositional ideas.

The Dialectical Döppelganger of “Creativity” To be “critical” in these ways is not yet sufficient for criticality. Life is not a matter of only tearing things down to their basics. Out of negativity can, and must, come creativity. Plants provide the example. A plant continues its species by flowering to produce seeds, having the flower die so that the seeds, which have been nourished by the plant, can become available for distribution through whatever mechanism, and lastly producing a new plant. The flower dies (negativity) in order to produce new order in the world (positivity). Dying and being reborn are both necessary for criticality to be complete. A focus on one side or the other cannot produce a “live birth” of thought and action. Continual negativity (critical thought) without concomitant positivity (creativity predicated on the negativity discoveries) eventuates in an energyless world. Without energy being continually suffused into the world, the world would die through entropy. Positivity without negativity becomes groundless action with no relation to how the world works (through repressions, marginalizations, and so forth) and, therefore, is empty, naïve action doomed to ultimate failure by its baselessness in reality. Both are mutually interdependent. Herbert Marcuse (1992) wrote, “In the theoretical reconstruction of the social process, the critique of current conditions and the analysis of their tendencies necessarily include future-oriented components” (p. 11). Through reconstructing our understanding of and actions in the “social process” of creating society, there cannot be only reality-oriented analyses

Being Critical

39

(the way things are) but, also, a view or vision of the way things might be (“futureoriented components”). Such “future-oriented components” is what I am terming “creativity,” the necessary counterpoint and accompaniment of “criticality.” Please note, however, the “creativity” outcome will, itself, need submitting to further critique in all the ways outlined above. This is a never-ending cycle of critique-creativity as we continually take apart our own projects. In other parts of this book (chapters on imagination, pure imagination, time, and identity) there are explorations of the “creativity” side of critique. There is a caution that must be attached to these ideas. We can, easily, repeat the social structures we had thought we would be leaving behind, just as Michael Apple might have let accountability in by the back door. Creativity and imagination are not simple affairs.

Bourdieu on Criticality and Self-critique The above continual critique-creativity cycle leads to a second reason for focusing upon being critical. Bourdieu (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) attempted to teach us what is proper to social science research (we can read curriculum studies) and why it is proper. Bourdieu focused upon a form of “objectivity,” similar to criticality, as core to his project. One must always suspect that there is something more to what is at hand than our theories can deliver to us through engaging very high ‘theoretical’ stakes by means of very precise and often apparently very mundane, if not derisory, empirical objects.… What counts … is the rigor of the construction of the object … [C]onstitute socially insignificant objects into scientific objects (as Goffman did of the minutiae of face-to-face interaction), or … to approach a major socially significant object from an unexpected angle … the construction of the object [is] no doubt the most crucial research operation. (pp. 220–224)

Not only is it crucial to the project of understanding and action, but it is also, significantly “not something... effected once and for all... through a sort of inaugural theoretical act. The program of observation and analysis through which it is effected is not a blue-print that you draw up in advance” (pp. 227–228) but, rather, is always evolving under a person’s hands. Beyond the notion that the presence of the inquirer affects what is known, this means that the very purpose of the study is to come to know more about the object, not through holding it still in the initial theoretical grasp but by allowing it to alter a person’s initial theoretical grasp, teaching what is new that a person could not have predicted knowing in advance. Each of us may enter a project with “something in mind” that interests but what that “something” is eludes each of us for each of us is living in our own minds which are not adequate for realizing that the “something” lives in its own environment. Each of us must not become caught in a web of our own thoughts. Each of us must be open to what we do not know and could not have predicted knowing and must not allow the object to congeal into the already known. Often, we come to see the object of inquiry (perhaps it is “currere” or “social class” or “emancipation” or “multicultural thinking” or “race” or “democracy”) and

40

3 Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom

we think that we know what that “thing” is, and we are, simply, observing how it acts in the world and the permutations of those actions. In a non-crystallized curriculum studies practice, we would take these “items” as momentary leverage points, as heuristic images affording a particular momentary glimmer of “knowledge,” rather than as real, solid, and experienced. Social class is not something real but a label for a useful sociological theory for making sense of society. How else to explain why many US citizens tend to see themselves as “middle class,” no matter where they are in the economic system and yet there is the accompanying notion that one could “fall into” the lower class through economic misfortune. The person hasn’t changed, only her/his relationship to the economic sphere. The person already in the “lower class” also thinks of her/himself as “middle class.” These ironies of identification show us that social class is a relation, not a fact. This does not dismiss the usefulness of class but when taken as identity defining reality, it is an idea that hides the common humanness between us. I have written, over and over, that “relationship” is at the core of “being critical” as it depends upon a dialectical orientation. What do I mean by this? I mean that categories we use to describe the world are not solidified objects but orientations toward reality. Even the physical clothing a person wears doesn’t make her/him one kind of person or another. It orients others toward a person, suggesting a particular aspect of self and the reality in which the person lives, and the person wants you to see her/him living. In Bourdieu’s idea of “reflexive sociology,” he is asking us to notice how we think rather than crediting our thinking with “truth.” Bourdieu casts a jaundiced eye on all known objects and all ideas, asking us to stand away from our own theories and see them as appealing to certain aspects of our own histories and certain edifices within the world of scholarship within which we work. Taken as real they are false prejudices about how the world is. To resist this, we must become un-caught up with their truth value, stand back from race, ethnicity, currere, educational objectives, classrooms, democracy, even from the common rejection of the Tyler Rationale and see each of them as attached to us for many reasons from which we must attempt to disentangle ourselves. This excursion into the multiple understandings of “critical” brings us to the brink of dialectics and unlearning as twin modes of being able to understand the world and question ourselves dialectically through processes of unlearning. While these will be addressed separately, please note that they are intertwined.

Dialectics “Dialectics,” in modern times, has meant “Hegelian” dialectics. Simply put, history and social change proceed through a struggle between two opposing ideas or systems. Out of this struggle a new idea and a new system arise which becomes the new norm. This new norm, eventually produces its own opposition with which society struggles, producing yet another synthetic norm that becomes the new way of living. I do not mean this Hegelian perspective. Rather, I propose dialectics as a state of being

Dialectics

41

within the world as it exists that does not resolve into a new state, a new norm. Rather, the state of the world is one of constant struggles between unresolvable opposites (dialectical döppelgangers) which structure our experiences. To name them as structures does not mean to name them as physical facts. As with Bourdieu’s “structuring structures” and “dispositions,” these dialectical structures are features of our unseen social construction of reality. What we find in the world is not “in the world” but, rather, how we structure the world we find. It is possible to imagine a wholly different set of dialectical döppelgangers, but those imaginings do not negate the power of the dialectical döppelgangers we inherit from within our cultural ideologies. These inherited dialectical döppelgangers are so fundamental to our common world that they constitute, together, a kind of necessary bond to each other. We cannot think the one without thinking the other. Together, they function, historically, as a pendulum in which we swing between them. We may, at any one moment, favor one over the other, but in that moment the oppositional term is also, always, present in our lives. How can we hold two mutually opposed ideas in mind simultaneously and what is the benefit? David Purpel presents concrete images of mutually opposed ideas in The Moral and Spiritual Crisis in Education (Purpel & McLaurin, 2004). He offers a set of cultural contradictions/paradoxes for us to see the ways in which no particular social action is purely “good” or “bad.” For example, our culture contains the paradox of competition and cooperation. For some educators, competition is seen as doing irreparable damage to a child, such that we must teach cooperative ways of being together if we are to achieve a peaceful world. But competition is part of being human. If we dismiss competition, we miss the opportunity to accomplish some tasks that can only be achieved through it. If cooperation overwhelms competition, we miss the energy for creative activity that competition can stimulate. The benefit is to understand the necessity of both rather than demonizing one or the other as if we could have only one active in our lives. That is the point: these two contradictory states (competition and cooperation) are always both necessary and active states in the world. See Georg Simmel’s book Conflict and the Web of Group-Affiliations (1955) for a powerful side-by-side study of competition and cooperation. In another image of dialectical thinking, Marshall Berman (1988) reminds us of Marx’s quintessential dialectical thought: capitalism is the worst of systems (it does great harm) and capitalism is the best of systems (the energy and inventiveness of the bourgeois world is what makes the possibility of a better future thinkable). Can capitalism be both? To think dialectically is to be able to entertain both these ideas simultaneously without attempting to resolve them into some new synthesis, seeing what happens when we bring opposites together. This, incidentally, does not mean that we must see capitalism as the end-state toward which all economic activity tends (a teleological perspective with no particular warrant) but it does not mean that the “solution” will be known through the way in which we inevitably transcend it as if there is some other end-state toward which we are tending. Berman pointed out a flaw in Marxist thought: the failure to account for how the dialectic would eventually resolve into a world of no dialectics. There is no resolution to conflicts but only living within their paradoxical constancy.

42

3 Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom

What are the dynamics of this non-resolution of opposites? Jacques Derrida taught that one of the terms in the dialectical döppelganger pair gains ascendancy, apparently displacing the other permanently. Derrida insists, however, on what he terms “the return of the repressed” at the margins of our thought and lives, not absent but marginalized and yet, paradoxically, never far from the center of consciousness. There is a concrete example of this from a dance curriculum I analyzed (BlumenfeldJones, 2004). I presented the work of Margery Turner, a dance educator who wrote a book devoted to helping the larger education world take dance seriously as an important dimension of our social world. She insisted on the many benefits of dancing, including good health, good social relationships, and the ability to work together democratically on, in this case, dance problems. The entirety of her book is dedicated to the seriousness of dance. And yet, at only one moment, she declares, in describing learning to jump and leap as important components of a dance vocabulary, that “besides it’s a lot of fun” (p. 84). She mentions fun, a form of joy, only once, on one page. She has repressed the possible frivolity of dance to help others take it seriously. And yet, the repressed returned, in a basically parenthetical phrase. For those of us who understand the sheer joy of being in motion as being a central character of what it means to dance, this absence of referencing joy (except for this one moment) is quizzical and disingenuous. It simply doesn’t speak to dance as an act and life. While joy cannot help but return, it doesn’t change the overall seriousness of the book although overall seriousness is no longer monolithic. This description provides a concrete image of power and politics in play as the socially approved (seriousness) which controls the social moment is momentarily broken through by another cultural value (joy) which is repressed. The repression occurs perhaps out of fear that those who dominate are serious and dance could lose power if joy were allowed any space. But, also, seriousness is, culturally, a masculine characteristic. Joy is, culturally, a feminine characteristic. Therefore, beneath this set of dialectical döppelgangers is another set: the masculine and the feminine. Ironically, dance is considered a feminine act, but the professional dance world is dominated by men. Therefore, what might seem an unimportant tension (seriousness/joy) reveals a more profound social malaise, the repression of the feminine. While this book is relatively old (1957), the same dynamic still holds in today’s dance world and, more broadly, in the larger culture.

Negative Dialectics Frederic Jameson (2010) deepens the difficulties of the non-resolution of opposites by drawing on Theodor Adorno’s “negative dialectics.” “[N]egative dialectics... can never reach a synthesis, [but is] a negativity that ceaselessly undermines all the available positivities until it has only its own destructive energy to promote” (p. 56). What is meant by “destructive energy”? We may assert the power of one dialectic term that is being hidden from view. Perhaps it is “the feminine” and all its attributes. We begin to value emotion and/or bodily life and/or sensitivity toward others and/or

Dialectics

43

intuition. What does the dominant masculine do as it confronts the ways in which its socially ascendant values of obdurate rationality, strength of resolve (over against emotion and sensitivity) and/or decisiveness of the solo accomplishment are called into question? One response is to commodify the feminine (self-help books, creation of technological replacements for these qualities) or simply show how they won’t succeed in the “real” world, won’t provide the solid knowledge necessary for “success” (defined in masculine terms). The masculine has only its “destructive energy to promote.” Where we thought the world might be changing in terms of the domination of the masculine, the dialectic finds ways to maintain the status quo. Although you cannot understand the masculine qualities without the feminine qualities, the masculine qualities always find a way to maintain ascendancy. The return of the repressed does not upend the political dynamics. In this way, not only is the original relationship not overturned but strengthened by showing that the dominant term (masculine) retains its centrality to our thinking. We have not really displaced the dominant/marginalized relationship. In this sense, there is no progress. There may be change in that the relationship between the two dialectical döppelgangers seems to be altered. We may even deem this change as “good” but not because it is foundationally “good” but only because we cease, for the moment to visit a dialectic perspective upon it. Jameson quotes Adorno at some length in this regard: Kant’s antithetical poles – form and content, nature and spirit, theory and practice, freedom and necessity, noumenon and phenomenon – have been so completely suffused by reflection that none of these determinations can stand as a final one. Each one, in order to be thought and indeed to exist, requires the production out of itself of that other moment that Kant set in opposition to it. Mediation is therefore in Hegel never … a midpoint between extremes, rather mediation takes place within the extremes themselves … an ontological foundation turns out to be, not distinct ideas set off discretely against each other, but ideas each of which requires its opposite and the relation of all of them together is process itself. (p. 56)

What is Adorno asserting? The antithetical poles (masculine and feminine) are necessary to each other if we are to think of either pole (masculine or feminine), but each pole (masculine and feminine) grows out of the other pole (masculine grows out of feminine, feminine grows out of masculine). One pole automatically expresses the other pole. But this is not simply an equation such as “white = black.” Masculine does not equal feminine; feminine does not equal masculine. We do not sit directly in the middle of these two extremes and, through mediation, make them equal to each other. Rather, it is a process of living within the confusion of the paradox which is suffused with unequal power. The poles can never “agree” with each other. White does not become black; black does not become white. The tension perseveres. There is another way to consider dialectical döppelgangers. Underneath the pair masculine/feminine is yet another pair: gender/no-gender. That is, it is possible to think of not thinking through gender at all. What are the consequences of this? The most obvious consequence is to recognize that gender has little to do with what a person can do, except for the possibility of physiological differences (and even this does not speak to the possibility of doing what seems only possible by a man). Take another example of the particular identity/no identity dialectical döppelganger

44

3 Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom

nexus. The dialectical döppelganger of class would be no class or classless. What if we examine people’s social experience in the light of social class not being a defining characteristic of their lives? Could we find instances in which people interacted at the interstices of class such that it, at least momentarily, changed one’s relationship to another person? Capacities of another might be revealed that were invisible because the person’s social class identity prevented someone else from even crediting the possibility that the person has those capacities (for thought or action or ideas). Race carries the same dialectical doubleness: race and no-race within each person. If we take race as but a difference of bodily attributes which say nothing about intellectual capacity, artistic talent, goodness of heart or simple living of a life with no particular talents, we discover the breadth of human possibility for any person. An example comes from the 2014 Ferguson MO, USA protests around the death of a young Black man, Michael Brown, at the hands of a Ferguson, MO policeman. His unjustified death brought Ferguson and parts of the rest of the country to rise up in nightly protests. At one of those protests taking place in Ferguson, a young African-American woman was interviewed by USA Today, about her feelings about the protests. She said that while the protests were very important to gain justice for the AfricanAmerican community, while she was proud to be a Black woman and loved her community, she also wished people could see her as just a person aside from a Black woman protesting injustice. She said that she was more than only that identity. She is delineating the relationship between herself as a racialized person and herself as a non-racialized individual. Others inserted her into a racialized world that, for her, was not her world tout court. The non-raced self that is her was made entirely invisible by others but did not lessen that she was “more than she could know” (Polanyi) or that others could know. To the degree that each of us has a set of attributes that have nothing to do with race, to that degree non-race is the “right” identity. On the other hand, with race comes particular cultural formations that bring certain values forth that we would not have without the racial divides of the world. What do we miss when we insist on race (or class or gender or any other social category) identity as core to our being? What do we miss when we pretend that race is just a skin pigment? To be dialectical is to insist on keeping both terms of the dialectical relationship in play simultaneously. The dialectics of race often become ignored in favor of political expediency, but this makes them no less problematic to the people affected by that dialectic.

The Dialectics of First Impressions Equally importantly, the first impression we have of something turns out to be a correct impression, even if it seems, as Jameson puts it, a “stupid first impression.” That is, we are rarely incorrect in noticing the power disparity and which element has the upper hand. Jameson puts it this way.

Dialectics

45

… that stupid first impression [we had] was not altogether wrong, there is a tripartite movement … stupid first impression as the appearance; ingenious correction in the name of some underlying reality or ‘essence’; … finally … a return to the reality of the appearance. It was the appearance that was true all along. (p. 57)

For instance, if we at first, culturally, see a white person as more virtuous and less dangerous than a black person, this is a stupid first impression. We can cleverly show that this is a stupid idea by both citing empirical evidence (more white men are accused of violent crimes than black men) and showing, through logic, that there is nothing inherent about genetics that disposes black people to be more dangerous and less virtuous than white people. We can show that color is not an essence and carries no meaning aside from the meaning we associate with it. We could, logically, dissociate our wrong ideas from color. However, when we look at society as it is, we realize that there is, per capita, more crime, etc. in the black communities than in the white communities. The reality of appearance turns out to be “true all along” but not for the socially promoted reasons. What we must come to know is that there is something else going on (as we know there is and still has nothing to do with “race” which remains a false flag). On the other hand, the issues of black/white as race is more complex than this. Within the situation of a world in which distinctions between these two “races” specifically are fundamental to major contours of that world, we might expect that there would be work to “elevate” the value of the under-valued and oppressed. Indeed, the recurring movements in aid of this (“Black is Beautiful,” retrieving the history of black people to show the high levels of cultural development from which they were stolen in aid of the slave trade, the movements that celebrate African origins) strengthen the notion that race does mean something. In the early days of developing Critical Race Theory, Richard Delgado (1995) actually reversed the prejudice by strongly asserting that the Black person was superior because of the environment in which s/he developed (the African continent and its non-temperate climate), an environment that was itself superior to the European, temperate climate. Over against this seeming acceptance of the validity of a power differential (which now favors the Black person), there is an equally strong valuing of transcending race (the postracism movement’s goal) in favor of seeing each person as simply a person—not a black person, not a white person, not a brown person, not an indigenous person, not an Asian origin person, but, simply, a person. Anti-racist curriculum strives to acknowledge the history of racism in order to re-order the power structure of the world. But it doesn’t really strive to surpass race or confront the dialectic of race/no-race. As for the value of race itself, many communities don’t want to lose the valuable understandings of how to be a person and be in the world that their individual communities have developed over millennia. There is much to be learned from the cultures of the various indigenous peoples. There is much to admire in the cultures that grew in the Middle East. We would not be the present culture we are without the mathematical and astronomical contribution of those Middle-Eastern cultures. And, of course, there are the complex, well-developed cultures of India and China (and other places as well). They have influenced the West, although you might

46

3 Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom

not be able to tell this from the present dominance of a so-called Western culture that acts as if it invented everything. We spend our energy differentiating the world into different races with different values. The dialectic here is a fierce one. The social justice community, (I as well) wants race and all that it carries with it to be a featured component of our work as race is a powerful feature of our social life. At the same time, they, and I, don’t want race when it is used against as a negative characteristic. And they, and I, don’t want race to obliterate the value of the individual qua individual. What is to be done? What is to be done is to confront our inability to resolve the tensions that cannot be resolved into some new synthesis. For, there is more here than simply a tension that could be corrected through right thinking. The “problem” is deeper than empirical evidence either for the values of various cultures or the value of seeing the individual as simply a human being. Jameson uses a film to illustrate this way of thinking. He presents the Fritz Lang film “Woman in the Window.” Edward G. Robinson … a mild-mannered professor … one night gets involved in a desperate web of love and murder. We think we are watching a thriller. At length, he takes refuge in his club again, falls asleep out of exhaustion, and wakes up: it was all a dream. The movie has done the interpretation for us, by way of Lang’s capitulation to the cheap Hollywood insistence on happy endings … But, in reality – which is to say in the true appearance - Edward G. Robinson is not a quiet, kind, decent, bourgeois professor dreaming, but a murderer dreaming, in his everyday life, that he is a quiet, kind, decent, bourgeois professor. Hollywood’s censorship [Lang’s capitulation to a happy ending] – Ed.] is therefore not some puritanical, uptight, middle-class mechanism for repressing the obscene, nasty, antisocial, violent underside of life, it is rather the technique of revealing it. The literal first version was true- the dream we first took for reality was real, and not the waking from it. (p. 57)

The film and the censorship reveal that our image of our society as “decent” is a false front, that the censorship of the darkness in the film is an acknowledgment of the darkness that is true to us and points us directly at it. We try to repress the dialectical döppelganger so that we cannot see its problematic, but in that act of suppression is the acknowledgment of its truth. The dialectic is that inveterate, infuriating perversity whereby a common-sense empiricist view of reality is repudiated and undermined – but it is undermined together with its own accompanying interpretations of that reality, which look so much more astute and ingenious than the common-sense empiricist reality itself, until we understand that the interpretations are themselves also part of precisely that ‘first impression’. (p. 59)

Confronting this perversity, this impossibility of resolving the dialectic allows a person to live within ambiguity, live in “the slash” that divides the partners, and feel constantly at sea and seasick while understanding the tentativeness of any conclusion or any allegiance. Part of this ambiguity is, as Jameson notes, that those who critique “common-sense empiricism” assert that their “astute and ingenious” observations are “also part of... the ‘first impression.’” All surety is undermined. This echoes Camus’ avowal of doubt.

Dialectics

47

Dialectical Conundrums: False Consciousness and First Impressions An example of this tension can be found in my experience of teaching the critical theory idea of “false consciousness,” in which our consciousness is controlled by power centers such that we believe that which is not actually beneficial to us as being beneficial to us, thus “false consciousness.” While teaching a Foundations of Education class, I presented the idea that classroom teachers get paid very little in comparison to the Dean of the College of Business at Duke University who, we acknowledged, did important work in organizational behavior theory, had a beautiful home in Durham, NC, and a beautiful beach house in a gated community on a NC barrier island. I asked if everyone was OK with that disparity. One student volunteered that she was. I asked her why. She replied that this Dean had a Ph.D., was clearly very smart, was doing important work in organizational behavior theory, and had earned his way of life. I asked if she thought she wasn’t smart. She said, no, she was smart. I asked her if her work was very important. She said that of course it was. I asked, then, if she was smart and her work was equally important why wasn’t she equally compensated for it? She couldn’t really answer that. I pointed out that this could be taken as a species of “false consciousness” in which she accepted the disparity even though there was no “good” reason on its face for accepting the disparity. She accepted a structure that wasn’t in her interest as being the way the world ought to be. She then persisted that it just seemed OK to her. How does this story corroborate Jameson’s assertions? The student denied that she was functioning from false consciousness, which in the theory of false consciousness, is a form of false consciousness. Had she agreed, however, that she had been living with false consciousness, then she was living in false consciousness. She could not escape the implacable logic of false consciousness. However, given Jameson’s exploration of the dialectic, a different understanding emerges. Her consciousness is not “false.” She is reporting something that is actually “true” as she sees/understands her world. She has not been merely duped, and her true interests lie over here on this other side of false consciousness. There is some correct understanding she has of the way the world works that works for her as well. Is there an antidote to false consciousness so that what a person thought s/he knew, s/he never knew at all? When we know something, we do know it. Maybe there are alternatives to a false consciousness way of thinking but, every way of thinking has some kernel of accuracy even if it leads in directions that, once pointed out, the person having the thought would find objectionable. In this case, we could say that her acceptance of the “way the world is” is, itself, a declaration of the truth of the alternative analysis (that fairness does not rule our social life, something else does) which reveals two different worlds existing simultaneously. If she feels she will have a good life as a teacher under present circumstances, then she will likely have that good life. Perhaps she sees the other analysis and accepts that her pay does not match what she does, but she understands that there are “rules” under which pay is distributed and she can accept those rules to pursue something she loves or spend her

48

3 Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom

energy fighting the rules and not enjoying her life. She may even recognize that there is no synthesis that leads toward a better truth. She (and we) can recognize that there is neither truth as a better truth, only different truths that constitute different worlds. Is one world better than another world? How so and in what ways? This is not to say that harm is not brought about in one of those worlds. That harm can be revealed and the disjunction of the harm with the world the false consciousness person thought s/he had is not acceptable. But, in the end to declare one of these worlds the correct world misses entirely the possibility that, for some, the alternative world is not of value. We, in academe and, especially in the social justice community, tend to think our version of the world is the only correct version and people who do not accept that are fools or fooled into being fools. It is possible that a person can make a different choice. I recall my philosophy mentor asking me about my experience of learning to become a dancer. I described some rather brutal “facts.” He asked me what I thought of these facts. I replied that I couldn’t not accept them since I had achieved what I desired: to become an accomplished professional modern dancer. He said, and this shocked me, that perhaps I had accomplished my desires not because of these experiences but despite them. I thought this was astute, but I still find it difficult to reject my education. My choice, even if I change my own teaching (which I did to some degree) cannot leave the “old” world behind entirely for the new world is built on the old world. The old world does not disappear, nor would it be acceptable for it to do so. Rather, we must live within the discomfort of the slash, must acknowledge that there is no final truth that ends the dialectical life. Dialectics is not a world. Dialectics is not an instrument for revealing the truth. The dialectical tension goes unresolved, that is the truth. Or, as Jameson puts Adorno’s negative dialectics: “each... requires its opposite and the relation of all of them together is process itself.” That is dialectics: constant process, no end in sight. This constant process of back and forth, of vibration between both sides of the slash can be fruitful and will inform the chapters on freedom, time, pure imagination, wild imagination, and identity.

Dialectics and Utopianism Before leaving dialectics, one thing must be addressed: the possible stumbling block of utopianism. It is a stumbling block because I do not intend for you to think that somehow dialectics reveals a truth that will place us in an ideal world. There is no ideal world. Mindful of Marshall Berman’s assertion that Marx could not account for how a dialectical world transitions into a post-dialectical world if the engine of change was dialectics, if change were an inevitable feature of human existence, then how could Marx theorize a moment in time when dialectics resolved into no more dialectics? What would bring about such a change? What if there is no ideal world, no utopia to which we transcend? Jameson, again, helps us here. Jameson writes of utopias, that “nothing could seem more Utopian than the dialectic which indicts our everyday consciousness” (p. 60). He notes that

Dialectics

49

from a Utopian perspective … if the dialectic succeeds it disappears as such. If dialectical thinking ever fully supersedes un-dialectical thinking and establishes itself in its place, if everyone then comes to think dialectically, then for all intents and purposes the dialectic will have ceased to exist, and something else, something as yet unidentified, some hitherto unknown species of Utopian consciousness, will have taken its place. (p. 60)

But, if dialectics is a fundamental structure to both physical and social life, how can it disappear? Jameson reminds us that Hegel, too, understood this dilemma. … Hegel never expected Verstand – the everyday commerce with material objects and identities – ever to disappear; it will always, along with our own bodies, continue to exist and to accompany whatever has been achieved of some dialectically higher consciousness or awareness. (p. 61)

That is, while we may think perhaps ever-more freeing forms of thought, those thoughts will be ensconced in the material world that is always a matter of dialectical life. We live, we die. Perhaps there is a continuum, as we live life, that moves toward death but there is no death until there is death. We are “filled” with life until we are not. We live the dialectics of living and dying constantly. So, too, with everything we live. Further, Jameson points out that there will never be a society without ideology (which is inherently dialectic as ideologies are compilations of coordinated ideas that have their own sets of dialectical döppelgangers). Althusser tried to remind us, ideology … the instinctive cognitive mapping of biological individuals – will always exist in whatever future society can be imagined. Nor can theory today expect to supplant the multitudinous forms of reified thinking and named and commodified thoughts and products on the intellectual market today, but only to wage persistent and local guerilla warfare against their hegemony. (p. 61)

Ideology is the “instinctive cognitive mapping of biological individuals.” Ideology is only “instinctive” in that it lies at such a deep level of consciousness that it might as well be genetically in-born. It is not but it feels that way. As such, as ideology is, itself, dialectical in character, our inner life is also constantly, inevitably dialectic. There is no superseding it. As Jameson has it, we cannot make it disappear, but we can be constantly vigilant against its vagaries, practicing “a persistent and local guerilla warfare against their hegemony.” But we must do so in the humility of understanding that our ideas are not final truths that transcend the dialectic. We must see all the dialectical partners which call into question our truths and understand how they are inescapable partners against whom we might perform guerilla warfare but without an expectation of expunging them from the world. We must live within the tensions of the dialectic. Dialectics is a complex set of structures, marked by powerful political forces and struggles. As we confront our ideologies and dialectically structured world it behooves us to ask ourselves, always, what are the dialectical döppelgangers associated with our most central tropes, ideas, categories, and more. How are they hidden from view? How are they subtly influencing what we think we are asserting or analyzing? What if we turn over our work to support the döppelganger such that the work now becomes about that opposite? What happens to what we have been analyzing or asserting or believing? What does the world look like from this almost

50

3 Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom

Alice’s Through The Looking Glass view of the world? What is revealed about that world of which we had not been aware? What is “positive” about this different world? And equally importantly, how has our work been suppressing this dialectical partner and at what cost? Recognizing, as did Derrida, that the repressed returns but always, also, maintains the unequal political footing of the relationship, we do not delude ourselves that we are fighting with great vehemence for maintaining our status quo. We are always on shaky ground, always at risk of losing our connection to that which has been idealized. But perhaps that idealized entity is not so ideal after all. That is the point of dialectics, to remain humble in the face of our positions. To make myself a specific example of this problem, I argue, throughout this book, for the place of imagination in our work and lives and seem to, conversely, argue against the deployment of reason. But, this book, is highly reasoned and in many places organized in a highly rational manner, even in that writing which promotes imagination. I try, in many cases, to present a well-ordered, perhaps even persuasive, argument. Where is the imagination in that? At the same time, I also present situations that must be lived through rather than have the bones of their rational organization exposed. This is the kind of paradox that marks all our work. If, in balance, I favor a rational approach, does this not undermine, by sheer number of words, the case being promoted? Or is there a way to argue that my form of “the rational” is a form of “imagination?” This seems a dodge that avoids the paradox. I cannot escape the contradictions of my own work. I must live within the dialectic of reason/imagination underneath of which is the masculine/feminine dialectic. I can point to the many places where I depart from the rational and enter the emotional and the impassioned. Are these forms of the feminine? In some places “yes” and in some places “no.” Can I identify the difference and make a case for the deployment of two kinds of emotion and passion? If I “make a case” am I, once again, participating in the masculinization of discourse? Or is there a feminine discourse that is equally strong? Or is this distinction specious and too binocular? There may be a sliding scale joining the masculine and the feminine, such that each of us can find ourselves somewhere on that scale and are both masculine and feminine in differing proportions? Or is this another way of denying the feminine? It is these questions which, I suggest, are stimulated by a dialectical perspective. What is presented in the above are the political and existential non-resolution of opposites characterized by struggles not easy to overcome. In the rest of this book, a variety of dialectics will be explored: imagination/reason (Chapters 4, 6, and 7), freedom/coercion and individual/communion-community (Chapter 5), identity/self (Chapter 8), and masculine/feminine (Chapter 9), all within the contexts of curricular issues, dialectics, and unlearning and played out, in the discussions in multiple ways. In the meantime, at this juncture, it must be noted that only a mental view and way of addressing the dialectic has been presented. But this is not sufficient. It remains “in the head.” As with the dialectics just articulated, we must ask: are we not bodies as well and is there not knowledge and understanding that is visceral and lived multidimensionally? In the ensuing unlearning discussion, I hope to show this is the case, that while I acknowledge that dialectics offers one of the paths of self-critique and, thus, field critique, through becoming “comfortable” with the discomfort of

Dialectics

51

dialectics, there is a partner to that path. That is, to live in dialectics, not as a mind world but as a fully lived, bodily world. This brings us to unlearning, a process of learning and unlearning from within a dialectical mindset but located within an embodied view of knowing.

Unlearning and the Practice of Being Critical A Brief Overview of Unlearning in the Education Field I begin with a brief excursus on the term unlearning in order to rule out other versions. The term unlearning has been used in the education field, since the early 1800s until now, as a form of improved cognition. Across innumerable books, unlearning means to divest oneself of incorrect or outmoded ideas in favor of correct or newer, better ideas. In the Curriculum Studies community, I found only one reference to unlearning. Lyn Davies (2014) has forwarded unlearning for fostering peace education. She asserts that such unlearning requires “the four Ds of deradicalisation, debiasing, disengagement, and desistence” (p. 450). She means by deradicalization “shifting radical views [to] delgetimise violence,” by debiasing “removing prejudice,” disengagement “to motivate disengagement from radical groups” and desistence “full-out going straight” rather than the crooked path of violence, hate, and terror (p. 464). In what follows, I assert that dialectical unlearning partakes of three of these Ds: it involves shifting from an attachment to a univocal view (that constitutes a form of radicalism). Rather we must see our biases as the crystallized positions of our theories, and cultivate a willingness to unlearn these attachments, thus deradicalizing. It involves seeing our biases and disengaging from them in order to see a wider vista. If there is violence within the Curriculum Studies field, it is practiced from both sides of our divides. It takes the form of dismissiveness, sardonic treatment of the opposite other with language designed to heighten our barriers. On the other hand, in participating in unlearning, we open the possibility of our thinking and living in new, unforeseen ways of being. Additionally, unlike Davies, the approach in this book is not only cognitive in character. An epistemological/ontological view is presented that involves how we inhabit our bodies and minds and the world in which we find ourselves. This makes it an ontological practice, not an intellectual practice. Additionally, unlearning is dialectical in character. Unlearning is not a matter of forgetting what is “false” but understanding that there is more than one “truth” or “reality” which is intimately connected to its döppelganger so that they are only sensible in the presence of each other.

52

3 Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom

Ontology and Unlearning Yeats wrote this in “Among School Children”: O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance? (Yeats, 1956, p. 214) The chestnut tree manifests in three forms: the leaf, the flowers, and the body of the tree (trunk and root). Is the chestnut tree only one of these expressions of its being? Or is each of these expressions deep down the same, only manifesting differently to our senses? As expressions of the chestnut tree each is fully that tree, but each expression appears different from the others. Yet, they are all, simultaneously, this one being: the chestnut tree. So, too, in the dance, can you distinguish between the dancer who dances and what s/he dances? The dance does not exist except that a dancer dances the dance. Yet, the dancer does not exist except as s/he is dancing. Without the dance, the dancer is not a dancer. Without the dancer, the dance is not a dance. Both need each other, is incomplete without the other yet we speak of the dancer separately from the dance and we speak of the dance as if it exists as a “thing” that is separate from the dancer dancing. Dance is simultaneously a bodily (actual movements) and a mental practice (dance as choreography, the plan of the movements). The actual moving is the immediately lived experience and the choreography as plan is the prospective and retrospective versions of the reality of what we call a “dance.” The choreography is prospective in that the choreographer and dancer project into the future how the dance is unfolding across time. The choreography is retrospective because the dancer must know from where s/he has come and to where s/he is going, trying to tie together the elements into one whole s/he knows even as the whole unfolds one small piece (one movement) at a time. As dance is these paradoxes and complexities, so, too is the practice of Curriculum Theory or Curriculum Studies scholarship. As we construct our arguments and presentations, we live through the actual lived experience that gives rise to the work and as we construct those arguments, they become retrospective renderings of the lived experience and, also, prospective renderings that project into the future. These various and different moments of the intellectual work are akin to the leaf, blossom, and bole, akin to the relationship between the dancer and the dance, all the “elements” present in one way or another at every moment, even if not “visible.” And, just as for dance, “theory” and our intellectual work are lived experiences even though they may be conceptualized as mental work only. This goes to the point made in the chapter on mosaical curriculum thinking in which I describe a way of inhabiting books of theory (Levinas) through one’s body, through asking how the theory was a lived experience and sewing together moments of insight until a person could span the whole of the text even though, at any one moment, the person was only at one moment in the text. Additionally, I am asserting that lived experience is the basis

Unlearning and the Practice of Being Critical

53

for the theory and the theory as an immediate, vital, visceral experience of the lived experience. This is the beginning gambit in thinking about unlearning. Perhaps we tend to treat some curriculum theory as a “thing” outside of and separate from us. That theory, rather than a living of life inside ourselves and related to the life outside ourselves (thus a continuum of projection and imagination) gains attributes as if it were a living thing separate from us. It becomes “true.” The truth, however, is that the theory is not “true” or “real.” It only “lives” when we live “it,” when we enact “it,” when we breathe life into “it.” So too with our analytic categories such as race, age, ethnicity, ability, and so forth. There is no “it” there. What is the “it” except something each of us assembles to make sense of a lived experience. In so doing we enact the “it” (race, age, ethnicity, ability, and more) into the world. We could re-encounter the “it” (race, ethnicity, and so forth) and the “it” (race, age, and so forth) would change in that re-encounter. Who is to say which is the correct understanding of race, age, ethnicity, and so forth? All we can do is point to the consequences of viewing each of them in particular ways and speak of the meaning of those consequences for our lives. All each of us can do is try to understand another’s understanding of race, age, ethnicity, and so forth and, in that encounter, perhaps improve the world for both of us. Each time we contemplate a curriculum theory or social category, the theory or category is wholly new, for we must assemble it again just as every time a dancer dances a dance, it is a new dance that has never existed in the world before. In that reassembly the theory and the dance are performed as unique moments. And yet, “over time” the theory, category, or dance appear to be things we talk about that we seem to hold in common with all the other instances of the theory or category or dance from the past. The theory or category or dance appears to have continuity over time. They become familiar to us and “real” (they exist in time and space). At the same time, they are unreal as they only exist as we attend to their “existences.” As with the chestnut tree, we must ask: is the theory or social category real independently of my thinking it? Or does it only exist when I think it? And, what of other theorists or people living the category who are “performing” (thinking and acting) the theory or category differently even though their thoughts and actions seem substantially the same? Is it truly the same theory or category? Or does the theory or category exist only in the mind of each thinker? Or is it all these things, still this chestnut tree, this theory and not some other tree or theory? All the malleability of experience is in play as we witness the tree, our educational experiences, our theories, our categories, the curricular life of a classroom. None of these are concrete. Yes, they are concrete (something actually happens). But their concreteness (what each of us chooses to feature in the unfolding curriculum, theory, or category) is a matter of us endowing meaning to what is not a “thing.” If our ideas, theories, or categories are not things that have their own existence, are not separate entities from us, then they are expressions of our presence in the world. Those expressions have a history, have come “from somewhere” and are not eternal. The very moment of expression changes the dance of the ideas or categories as it adds to the history of those ideas or categories. In bringing the idea or category into

54

3 Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom

the world we have already changed it by the sheer fact of bringing it into the world at this historical moment. And, as all expressions of ideas or categories are partial (which is the idea or category, the leaf, the blossom, or the bole?), we only know the idea or category in some partial way. Acknowledging Yeats’ question (“how can we know the dancer from the dance?), we acknowledge a dialectical way of experiencing the wholeness of ourselves. This leads to the idea of unlearning which I discovered well before my scholarly life.

Unlearning the Lessons of Knowing: A Dialectical Analysis I came upon the idea of unlearning many years ago, while studying dance with Betty Jones. I came from a particular “school” of dance (the Nikolais School based in German Expressionist dance brought to this country by Hany Holm in 1931) and Ms. Jones came from a very different tradition, the Humphrey-Weidman tradition (distilled through Jose Limon for whom Ms. Jones was the principal female dancer for many years). When I studied, danced, and choreographed in NYC (1970–1977) there were still “schools” which, while cordial to each other, maintained distinctive approaches to modern dance. So, taking class with a Limon dancer while I was a Nikolais dancer, meant we “spoke” different languages about dance, both actual ways of talking and the ways in which we occupied our bodies. I was desirous of, as I put it to myself, “trying on a new body.” During one class Betty offered me the following advice. The class had been standing in first position, preparatory to doing our warm-up pliés. She stood in front of me and told me to “stand up straight.” I insisted that I was doing so, almost as earnestly as she insisted otherwise. She proceeded to show me my mistaken perception by moving me forward over the front of my feet. I felt as if I was falling forward. I was surprised that this was “standing up straight.” She said that this is what it meant for a dancer to “stand up straight.” This new way of standing straight felt odd, and I said so. She responded, “Well then, from now on, when you feel you are right you will know you are wrong. When you feel you are wrong, you will know you are right.” (Please notice the use of the “to be” verb, I “am” right and I “am” wrong, ontological references linked to cognitive references.) Her advice—this seemingly odd moment about a basic posture in dance—began my journey of what I came to term unlearning, understanding that what often seems normal and natural is not necessarily right or appropriate and must be unlearned to open new possibilities. We might consider the comfort we find in our categories and so forth as a species of “normal” and “natural” and needing unlearning. Unlike the typical use of “unlearning” (getting rid of wrong thinking), this state of “standing up straight” has a dialectical character. Feeling as if I am falling forward while not actually falling is the dialectic of moving and stillness. In dance (in theorizing?) “standing up straight” may seem static (standing) but, even in stillness, there is no stasis. Teetering on the verge of moving but not moving; a dynamic tension between motion and stillness. Both are inside each other. Stillness is a matter of being

Unlearning and the Practice of Being Critical

55

able to move at any moment. It is a vibrancy that is not yet moving. Conversely, when in motion, there is an inner stillness in which I know, at every moment, where all the various and smallest parts of my body are in space and moving through arcs of motion and time. In doing this I am cultivating as completely as possible my ability to attend and notice my body/mind. I am maintaining a dual consciousness unified within one consciousness. Betty was not asking me to be a wooden stick but a living, breathing conduit of always emerging energy, caught, at that “standing straight” event, between moments of motion. So, too, with dialectical unlearning. The dialectic of “opposites unresolved” constitutes living within contradictories, being in one term of the opposition, noticing the play of the other term, being one or the other to see what is revealed or experienced in such a state while also knowing I am both states at once. This dynamic situation is an ontological state in regard to dialectical unlearning. It was present in my encounter with Diane Ravitch’s critique of multicultural education after being told how evil was her work in this area and finding that her arguments had to be confronted. It was present in Jurgen Habermas’ assertion (1997, personal communication) that there was a difficult dialectic inside a liberal democracy that wanted to be inclusive and needed a sense of unity among its citizens and the desire of ethnic communities within that democracy to continue their specific ethnic lives (including language). Habermas was not declaring for one side or the other but only noting the dialectical tension within this situation. It was the encounter with James Macdonald’s essay on multicultural education (Macdonald, 1995b) in which he dismissed multicultural education as a “month-this” and “month-that” education. Macdonald wrote of the deep structure of school as favoring one group’s notion of “being at home,” thus making schools places that were experienced, for many groups, as being in a strange, uncomfortable country in which you had no bearings and never would as long as schools are organized in the way they are organized. Home as a dialectical term: home/not at home, home/foreign place. These dialectics, to reference Adorno, are negative dialectics. To repeat, as Jameson puts Adorno’s negative dialectics, they: “can never reach a synthesis [they are] a negativity that ceaselessly undermines all the available positivities until it has only its own destructive energy to promote” (p. 56). In a sense there is no progress. Baldacchino (2019) observes this in Adorno. Practicism (the act of making something or practicing in the world) … “leads to the production of people who like organizing things and who imagine that once you have organized something, once you have arranged for some rally or other, you have achieved something of importance, without pondering for a moment whether such activities have any chance at all of effectively impinging on reality.” (p. 28)

Adorno is telling us that we often live in delusion about the importance or value of our work. The value of his negativity is to teach us to practice “a persistent form of doubt and an incessant search for error” (Baldacchino, p. 29). As our work unfolds, we always doubt and know that we are not “capturing” some full reality but only standing to the side of it, some facet which may not even be a facet of it except we think it might be. The work is always tentative, always provisional. We should not

56

3 Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom

be fooled since “critical, progressive or liberal approaches to... education... [may] clearly deceive us into thinking that at the end there is an emancipatory or liberating outcome” (Baldacchino, p. 29). We might ask of the social justice community how they have diminished oppression, marginalization, invisibility? When they stay in a purist stance, as if this is change itself, rather than acknowledging the possibility that no change has occurred, is this a form of delusion as described by Adorno? To judge everything in the light of the ends sought is antithetical to what unlearning and selfcritique require: skepticism, wonder, non-control over events. It is our recognition of our failures and the possibility that those with whom we disagree know something that might be of value that true criticality emerges. In short, we must unlearn our attachments. In the service of unlearning and self-critique, it is our task to accept states of disequilibrium. I experienced disequilibrium in my dancing with Betty Jones. I experienced disequilibrium when I read Diane Ravitch on multicultural education. I had to, as with Betty, try on Ravitch’s clothes for a while, see how it felt to think as she was thinking (rather than immediately judging her as wrong or right, good or evil). It was a revelation to consider the possibility that she had something to offer. When I read Tyler’s now infamous book, I was blindsided by what he wrote. The Introduction to his book informs the reader that this is not a step-by-step guide to curriculum development. Each chapter raises important questions for the developer to consider. In contrast to Tyler’s assertion, for many this book became a recipe, given in chronological order (step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4). Tyler never disavowed this use of his book. But he offered it not as a cookbook. The second revelation was how much of it partook of positions Dewey might have adopted. It’s true, I think, that the problem with the book is that it has every position taken but doesn’t help us to navigate those positions and make decisions. It has no point of view which is what makes it technocratic and easily transmogrified into the recipe it became. Given that it is still in print tells us that the world has little changed, is still locked into a technocratic mindset. He saw his work as part of the Progressivist tradition. His book had been written out of his experiences as the overall evaluator of the Eight Year Study (a study of progressive education institutions designed to demonstrate that progressive education was every bit as good, if not better, than traditional education). In a sense it was a field critique book as he sought to give voice to what had not been confronted. We might criticize Tyler for not arguing against the subsequent use of his book as a technocratic armature. Perhaps he became a victim of his own publicity. It seems apparent that he ceased being self-critical or critiquing the field. His ideas crystallized. Living dialectically in the intellectual domain can be used to uncover the hidden potentials in our theorizing when we are willing to unlearn our positions for a while. We can confront our prejudices against positions we do not accept. In my dance life I had to give up my prejudices about what constitutes “good dance” and enter Betty Jones’ tradition whole-heartedly. I had to “try on her clothing” in an open manner to determine what it offered me. I had to give up my own “clothing.” Without this I could not unlearn myself as there would only be myself continually. When Ms. Jones told me to become foreign to myself, I had to yield to that instruction (the

Unlearning and the Practice of Being Critical

57

bringing inside of another’s structure) in order to see what was there. This move is never complete or fully free of what I already know but the very attempt at setting myself aside yields new understandings and ways of doing. Just so with unlearning in curriculum studies—we need to take that which appears outside our accepted ways (even those we consider to be thoroughly wrong and wrong-minded) and enter into another way for a while whole-heartedly to see what is there. We can always reject what we find but we cannot do so legitimately if we have not, for a time, tried on that “clothing.” Once inside we may discover hidden well-springs of humanity covered up by the surface of what we even find objectionable. There may be ways of communicating across seemingly insurmountable divides. There may be ways of loosening our own bonds, of de-crystallizing our own thinking. As we unlearn what has become crystallized, we may free ourselves from the hypnosis of our own thoughts. Returning to those thoughts (as I returned to my original dance education) our return will be affected by the journey into a larger world. We can act “as if” our favored category or idea is not correct while simultaneously accepting that it is (“When I feel right, I’m wrong. When I feel wrong, I may be right.”). With dance at every moment, I must know that when I am moving, I am being still inside and when I am being still inside, I am dynamically moving. So, in dialectically unlearning our Curriculum Studies theories, we must confront that we are both raced and not raced, practical and not-practical, masculine and feminine, gendered and non-gendered, sexualized and not-sexualized, “dis”abled and able, and so forth. That is, we must recognize what is suppressed when entertaining either side of the dialectic. In so doing we will find ourselves more able to project new possibilities for ourselves and, in so doing, offer this possibility for others. Living in this way is living persistently “at sea” but we will, eventually “get our sea-legs.” We will be able to explore in a way unavailable when we only live in the land of our preferences. What does all this mean for this present inquiry? It means that as we must stand in the shoes of another, “trying on the clothes,” we learn something not about the other so much as about ourselves. We will, perhaps, learn that the “other” to our position is someone who feels or thinks just as we do. We may, thereby, find our own potential for feeling and thinking expanded. In this confusion of knowing, we might come to know that we do not really know the other just as we must admit that we do not know the racialized, classed, gendered, “disabled,” aged person. We do not actually know anyone. In this acknowledgment of “not-knowing” humility emerges. This humility yields the possibility of rethinking ourselves, unlearning what we thought we knew, confronting the unending, unresolvable character of our lives and our experiences. Finally, a dialectical attitude releases us from the need to control each other or our own thoughts and being. In “letting go” of our righteousness and one-sidedness, we can begin to expand the possibilities of Curriculum Studies. In this sense, this is not only an intellectual project: it is an ontological project and an ethical project, all at once.

58

3 Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom

Epilogue This chapter has been devoted to laying out a case and process for self-critique through dialectical unlearning. It is also a plea for an ecumenicism that recognizes that no curriculum problem is amenable of only one solution, no curriculum theory is wholly correct. What appears as a problem to one person may not appear to be a problem to another or what appears as a problem in one way appears also as a problem but in a different way. The process of dialectical unlearning self-critique offers the possibility of embracing the multiple voices of our field. In such embrasure we can shun another of our traditions: excluding and oppressing those with whom we don’t agree. If we think of the field as political (in the general sense of whose points of view will hold sway) we can at least decide whether we want a politics of exclusion or a politics of invitation. If we see the world as finished, then we will never see the world outside our own world-view. That is the challenge we face: to see what we cannot see because it is not available to us because we cannot or refuse to see it. If someone calls our attention to what we cannot see, will we be able to unlearn ourselves sufficiently to open ourselves to what we would have disconfirmed a moment ago? It’s not obviously “yes.” But it’s not obviously “no.”

References Argyris, C., Putnam, R., & Smith, D. M. (1985). Action science. Jossey-Bass Inc. Baldacchino, J. (2019). Art as unlearning: Towards a mannerist pedagogy. Routledge. Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (2012). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. Open Road E-Books. Berman, M. (1988). All that is solid melts into air: The experience of modernity. Penguin Books. Blumenfeld-Jones, D. S. (2022). Epistemicide in curriculum studies?: The erasure of the feminine and beauty/imagination/emotion/body/intuition/aesthetics/artmaking. In W. Zhao, T. Popkewitz, & T. Autio (Eds.), Epistemic colonialism and the transfer of curriculum knowledge across borders: Applying a historical lens to contest unilateral logics (pp. 158–174). Blumenfeld-Jones, D. S. (2004). Dance curricula then and now: A critical historical-hermeneutic evaluation. In W. M. Reynolds & J. A. Webber (Eds.), Expanding curriculum theory: Dis/positions and lines of flight (pp. 125–154). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice (R. Nice, Trans.). Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. University of Chicago Press. Davies, L. (2014). Interrupting extremism by creating educative turbulence. Curriculum Inquiry, 44(4), 350–468. Delgado, R. (1995). The Rodrigo chronicles: Conversations about America and race. New York University Press. Dewey, J. (1939). Experience and education. Touchstone. Dewey, J. (1897/2002). The psychological aspect of the school curriculum. In J. R. Gress (Ed.), Curriculum: Frameworks, criticism, and theory (pp. 165–174). Doll, W. (2012). Pragmatism, post-modernism, and complexity theory: The “fascinating imaginative realm” of William E. Doll. Routledge. Doll, W., & Gough, N. (2012). Curriculum visions (2nd ed.). Peter Lang. Gartner, A. (1973). After deschooling what? (A. Gartner, Ed.). Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.

References

59

Habermas, J. (1992). What does a legitimation crisis mean today: Legitimation problems in late capitalism. In D. Ingram & J. Simon-Ingram (Eds.), Critical theory, the essential readings (pp. 282–302). Paragon House. Hlebowitsh, P. (2010). Centripetal thinking in curriculum studies. Curriculum Inquiry, 40(4), 503– 513. Illich, I. (1970/2002). Deschooling society. Marion Boyars. Illich, I. (1986). H 2 O and the waters of forgetfulness. London: Marion Boyars. Illich, I. (1993). In the vineyard of the text: A commentary to Hugh’s Didascalicon. University of Chicago Press. Jacoby, R. (1975). Social amnesia: A critique of conformist psychology. Boston: Beacon Press. Jameson, F. (2010). Valences of the dialectic. Verso. Macdonald, B. J. (1995a). A transcendental developmental ideology of education. In Theory as a prayerful act: The collected essays of James B. Macdonald (pp. 69–99). Peter Lang. Macdonald, B. J. (1995b). Living democratically in schools: Cultural pluralism. In Theory as a prayerful act: The collected essays of James B. Macdonald (pp. 127–136). Peter Lang. Macdonald, J. B., & Purpel, D. E. (1987). Curriculum planning: Visions and metaphors. Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, 2(2), 178–192. Malewski, E. (2010). Curriculum studies handbook: The next moment. Routledge. Mannheim, K. (1936). Ideology and Utopia: An introduction to the sociology of knowledge (L. Wirth & E. Shils, Trans.). Harcourt, Inc. Marcuse, H. (1992). Philosophy and critical theory. In D. Ingram & J. Simon-Ingram (Eds.), Critical theory: The essential readings (pp. 5–19). Paragon House. Miel, A. (1946/1978). Crystallization in education. In J. R. Gress & D. Purpel (Eds.), Curriculum: An introduction to the field (pp. 527–539). McCutchan Publishing. Pinar, W. (1975). Curriculum theorizing: The reconceptualists. McCutchan Publishing. Polyani, M. (1962). Personal knowledge: Towards a post-critical philosophy. Harper & Row. Polyani, M. (1966). The tacit dimension. University of Chicago Press. Posner, G. J. (1994). Analyzing the curriculum. McGraw-Hill. Purpel, D., & McLaurin, W., Jr. (2004). Reflections on moral & spiritual crisis in education. Peter Lang. Ravitch, D. (1990). Multiculturalism: E Pluribus Plures. The American Scholar, 59(3), 337–354. Schwab, J. (1969, November). The practical: A language for curriculum. The School Review, 78(1), 1–23. Simmel, G. (1955). Conflict and the Web of group-affiliations (K. H. Wolff, Trans.). The Free Press. Turner, M. (1957). Modern dance for high school and college. Prentice-Hall. Tyler, R. (1949). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. University of Chicago. Van Manen, M. (1977). Linking ways of knowing with ways of being practical. Curriculum Inquiry, 6(3), 205–228. Walker, D. (1971/2002). A naturalistic model for curriculum development. In J. R. Gress (Ed.), Curriculum: Frameworks, criticism, and theory (pp. 489–502). McCutchan Publishing. Yeats, W. B. (1956). The collected poems of W.B. Yeats. The Macmillan Company.

Chapter 4

Wild Imagination and the Critical Project

Abstract This chapter explores another way to practice reimagining: through wild imagination serving a critical project. Since the critical project is frequently associated with political ends, politics is also reimagined as an everyday, immediately lived experience. “Wild imagination,” as a critical and political act (as reimagined in this chapter) is explored through examining the practice of both science and art. Three curriculum inquiry projects are presented which become images of what it means to practice dialectical unlearning and reimagining in the critical project of wild imagination. Keywords Curriculum Studies · Embodied imagination · Imagination · Politics · Emmanuel Levinas · Hans-Georg Gadamer [In this chapter I elaborate on what, in earlier writing (Blumenfeld-Jones, 2018), I have called wild imagination. Wild imagination is contrasted to radical imagination, which is often associated by critical theorists and critical education theorists with a critical political project. If the critical project is one in which we interrogate our own presuppositions about the world as well as interrogating how the world feeds us with pre-digested understandings, then, we need an imagination that is not held to already determined desired outcomes. This has already been obliquely asserted in the “Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom” chapter in terms of the need for creativity in a critical project. What makes wild imagination valuable is its ability to surprise and disconfirm what we believe. It can take us to new insights unavailable when we stay connected to the world as it is or even might be. It is this element of surprise that is, for me, the most important quality of any deployment of imagination. Additionally, this is a species of the practice of unlearning.]

Politics at Every Second: Power in Everyday Life Conventionally, critical theorists and critical education theorists primarily focus on political ends (writ large) in their analysis of society and, in Curriculum Studies, their analysis of education practice. It is necessary, therefore, to describe the notion © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 D. S. Blumenfeld-Jones, Reimagining Curriculum Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9877-4_4

61

62

4 Wild Imagination and the Critical Project

of politics at play in this present work and how it may differ from the radical/social justice visions of the political. David Purpel argued (personal communication, 1988) that politics is everywhere in our daily lives. He gave the example of going to the coffee room. If, on the way to the coffee room, I pass someone in the hall, I instantly have a political interaction marked by whatever social interaction I have with that person. That person occupies a particular position in the political hierarchy of the institution, as do I. Such a simple interaction as the exchange of greetings (“Good morning”) has political meaning in how (or even, if) the person says, “Good Morning,” dependent on our relative positions in that hierarchy. Thus, the form and style of greeting is a species of political life based on the power differential between us. In a concrete example of a social interaction with political meaning, I recall being at our ASU University Club one evening for a dinner with colleagues, meeting a candidate on a job interview. While waiting in the foyer for my party, Lattie Coor, the university President at the time, came in with his wife for dinner. President Coor had met me while presenting me with a teaching award two or three years earlier. He sat down, with his wife, and, looking up at me, greeted me by name and asked how I was doing and why I was there. He remembered me, despite having only met me, a non-tenured faculty, that one time. The political context was that President Coor worked for a flattening of the power curve at the university. This interaction was a demonstration of his leadership approach which helped secure my support of him as the university leader. In another example, when my wife worked in a major university medical center for a psychologist, she noted that her employer (and, by extension, she) was at the bottom of the power structure. He was not an M.D. but only a Ph.D. and she worked for him. If she said “Good Morning” to certain doctors she passed in the hall, they might entirely ignore her as beneath their regard. She was made invisible. These are two examples of the powerful form of the lived politics to which Purpel was referring: politics is everywhere at every second, in the seemingly most benign of interactions. Why is this important to the topic of politics? Politics is, conventionally, connected to political action taken by groups to secure particular social and economic ends. Political actions are attempts to influence institutions of all sorts. In this wise, politics is, fundamentally, a matter of the power derived from organizing groups of people to put pressure on political entities (or economic entities or social institutions) to achieve particular ends. Even more narrowly, politics has to do with working within governments for such governments to enact particular laws and the disbursement of governmental assets in support of particular governmental policies and actions. At the heart of all this political activity is power: who has the power to “make things happen?” If we take power to be what Purpel described, then the conventional view of politics described above is but a specific location for the deployment of power. It means that everything in our lives is laden with politics because everything is about power. What, then, is power itself? Looking at the word’s etymology we discover that one of the Latin words for “power” is “potere.” Potere means “to be able”: the ability to do something. However, potere’s derivation comes from two Latin words: “pos” and “esse.” “Pos” means “able” and “esse” means “to be.” Thus, power which, initially

Politics at Every Second: Power in Everyday Life

63

means “to be able” (“potere”) becomes, when the base words are read together, “able to be” (“pos” and “esse”). Power, in its most fundamental state, has to do with our ability to exist, to be. When we feel powerless, it is our ability to exist, our place in the world that is threatened. It may be that our ability to do something (to be able) is threatened when we have no power (that is the purpose of political action, to gain the ability to do things), but, more fundamentally, our lack of ability to do things threatens our very existence. At base, power is directly connected to our existence in the world. It is to this power that I think Purpel is pointing. It was my very existence which was affirmed by the President of my university, Lattie Coor. It was the attempt to make an existence disappear which was at the core of the interactions between my wife and the M.D.s at the Medical Center. If we think, then, of power within and about classrooms as “able to be,” we can begin to understand that each person in a classroom (and outside classrooms as well) is attempting to negotiate how to establish her/his being in the world. As a curricular example of negotiating the “power or ability to be,” there is my experience as an ex officio (University representative) member of a high school district level Curriculum Council. The Council consisted of three representatives from each school (the school registrar, a teacher, and a parent) plus the Associate Superintendent for Curriculum. At those Council meetings, I witnessed this “truth” about power and beingness in the curriculum, but at one particular meeting, this became explicitly evident. The District Curriculum Council was deliberating about what courses to allow in a particular school. The school in question was the district’s “poverty” school. They were requesting to experimentally and temporarily offer a hybrid math/geography course for their students which they thought would better engage their least successful learners. Such a course had been on the books for many years but had been, by Council agreement, removed several years earlier because no school was offering it. The wealthy schools balked at the poverty school’s request to offer it temporarily, experimentally. Why should the Council authorize offering a course it had previously eliminated? At the same time, two of the wealthy schools wanted to offer a creative writing course because their students were requesting such a course and the two schools thought this was a good way to extend the English curriculum and engage their students. It was clear, during the discussion that the “poverty” school and the “wealthy” schools were functioning from the same aspiration: student engagement. The wealthy schools had more power over the Council and other schools in the district seemed inclined to side with them on their rejection of the “poverty” school’s request. Wealth always has more political power. At this point, I intervened. I “read back” to the Council the similarity of arguments for both courses. I noted that the “poverty” school was only asking for a chance to temporarily offer this course. All the schools had the same reasons. Why would the Council accept one school’s request and not the other school’s request? Wasn’t what was best for the students the basic mission of all schools? For me, the “wealthy” schools were presenting a raw display of power and politics as they wanted to favor their wealthy students at the expense of the poverty students. They were possibly playing a zero-sum game, thinking only one request for a new course would be approved by the Council. Their power display was unjustifiable as they didn’t work on behalf of all students but only on behalf of

64

4 Wild Imagination and the Critical Project

their students. In the end, the Council acceded to both requests but only after the power differential was shifted. What was at the heart of the conflict and subsequent resolution? It was the question of “being,” the being of all the students, their ability to find engagement in the world for their benefit as human beings. This is but one example of politics (in this case at a District Curriculum Council) as not just about securing particular goods or services for particular populations (the conventional understanding of politics) but securing their beingness. If power as “able to be” is on display in typically political settings, it is also on display in the deployment of wild imagination for the purposes of inquiry into the world. In the exploration of the details of wild imagination, the focus is on being in the world for the purpose of? Being in the world. That is, there is no agenda to discover or prove X. There is only a “being present” and feeling the presence of the world around us, allowing the world to come to us rather than manufacturing something. Wild imagination is that deployment of beingness, one of the unspoken themes of this book. In order to cultivate such a presence through wild imagination, being in the world is not a state we intentionally seek. Rather, it is a state we live. As in other parts of this book, living a state of being (pure imagination, freedom, dialectical understanding, unlearning, wild imagination, time, identity) changes that state from a mere technological move to an authentic way of living. Since imagination is, conventionally an act of mind, I want it clear that cultivating wild imagination is not merely a trick of the mind that has no relation to material reality. Wild imagination enters into a real world and comes away, afterward, with real insights and questions because they are part of the real world in which they are found. There is a certain “naturalness” to the insights and experiences of wild imagination. They may not be (as you will see) necessarily natural (they are, after all, acts of imagination) but they will seem naturally right, which is one of the signs that they are true insights. Such insights will surprise, another of the signs of true insight. If there is a confirmation of what one already knows, this is a sign that the imaginative act is not genuine in the sense of beingness and presence. Further, as you will see below, through an openness to the world around us, power as “able to be” becomes a core figure in the inquiry without being obvious and conscious. It appears without being called because it is so fundamental to our lives. Some examples of wild imagination to be presented do not have obvious connections to politics and power or to the curriculum. Other examples will be directly connected to curriculum thinking. Taken together, however, they all speak to different dimensions of wild imagination which can be imported into curriculum thinking. And, in every case, there will be a discussion of how wild imagination intersects with daily power and politics.

Varieties of Wild Imagination

65

Varieties of Wild Imagination Viaticus Hooveraneous: A Story of Wild Imagination In this section, I offer a more personal image of wild imagination that might, at first, seem trivial but I would argue, isn’t. One spring, many years ago, our Hoover upright vacuum cleaner stopped working. I was prepared to place it in the alley for trash pick-up. My wife, Kathryn, demurred. We had on one side of our backyard a desert garden of plants from Madagascar along with an old mulberry tree. The garden was lumpy, sandy with clusters of some strange looking desert plants. Kathryn proposed placing the dead vacuum cleaner in the garden as another “planting.” We dubbed this new plant “Viaticus Hooveraneous.” It stayed in our garden for many years. It was a source of embarrassment for our children who had to explain, when friends would come over, that their parents were a bit cracked. But Kathryn wasn’t off in this proposal or the reality. Something happened to that garden; the garden (all gardens) became reimagined and brought into question by the tension that existed between the “natural” garden and this “unnatural” element. It forced one to question what constituted “natural” and it brought to the fore that all gardens are, by definition, “unnatural” but we never notice this fact. When I visited Hangzhou China in 2015, I took a walk in the “woods” of West Lake (a UN World Heritage site). The “woods” seemed wild and untended but, of course, this was not simply a wild space. The “wildness” was planned and controlled in a way that was invisible so that it was a play on wildness that felt quite natural and wild and yet it is a huge “garden.” I doubt I would have noticed this had it not been for Viaticus Hooveraneous. The deployment of the vacuum cleaner was simple (although care was taken with where exactly it should be placed). Once placed it was never moved; it weathered, dirt and sand shifting around it. It became one with the garden, as naturally “there” as the plants (which, because they were from Madagascar, also were artificially “there”). I hope you can imagine what this simple device spawned all because Kathryn had the wild notion to put unalikes together, only to discover the dialectic that they might not be so unalike even though they really are (a species of Jameson’s notion our “first stupid impressions” being correct, see Chapter 3 for more). Her move constantly presented questions about nature and machines and our relationship to each of them together. This simple moment of “wild imagination” brought about circles of meaning that circled around each other and presented paradoxes in this installation that was, also, spontaneous. And this “installation” was also political. It was political in that it rearranged our relationship to nature as human beings, bringing to light questions about who we are and who is nature and what is that relationship. It doesn’t provide answers to such questions, but it does stimulate in a visceral manner such questions to arise. These are two important elements of this notion of “wild imagination”: a visceral life that skirts logic and reason and living in a state of feeling. In the following

66

4 Wild Imagination and the Critical Project

discussions, a visceral life and feeling appear as central motives to the deployment of wild imagination.

Imagination in Art, Imagination in Science I have been involved with Arts-Based Education Research (ABER) from near its beginning. As someone who spent the first 20 years of his life making art and teaching others to make art, I felt a strong dedication to the development of the capacity to make art. I have argued, in many places, that making art is equivalent to doing research into the world. That is, an artist has questions that occur to her or him and through the act of art-making addresses those questions. In every case, I would argue, the questions are political and/or concerned with power. For instance, two novelists, Jhumpa Nahiri and Juan Gabriel Vasquez, spoke of their impetus for writing their novels. Nahiri (Leary, 2013) stated that her purpose in writing a novel is to answer questions she finds in her writing. She stated, “so much derives from these questions that I ask, things that are utterly beyond my personal set of experiences, and it’s my attempt to try to understand, to break out of my own consciousness, the limitations of my own life.” This approach is an exploration of the power structures in one’s experience and, in her case, understanding beyond her own limited life as she unlearns herself in new ways. In finding questions in her writing, rather than knowing the questions she wants to ask (and, consequently, possibly already having the answers), she is opening herself to a world beyond her knowledge. This is an instance of shifting power from her own experience to the experience of others through an act of imagination. This is political in the sense already presented. Vasquez (Simon, 2014) stated that, in writing his novel about the Columbian drug wars, we know a great deal about the public side of the conflict … too much information about that public side of violence…. Where can we go to find out about the private side? … the moral, emotional impact … this is what novels do … we can create this space where we can think a little bit about the private, the intimate, the psychological, the moral consequences of what was going on…. (Simon, 2014)

Vasquez’s interest in the private and the “moral consequences of what is going on” is another example of politics and power on the immediate level of life. And, as with Nahiri, he does not begin with what he knows and what questions he wants answered, but, rather, with allowing the writing to speak to him. Whatever he “discovers,” he finds through an openness to what he doesn’t know. To put it succinctly, as E.L. Doctorow stated in an interview about his writing, “I write in order to find out what I am thinking” (Doctorow, 2014). In all these cases, including the Hooveranius story, politics emerges “naturally” because power and politics are fundamental to our lives. We do not have to seek politics or declare politics. But, as with the Hooveranius story, in which the placement of the vacuum cleaner immediately raised questions about the machine/nature intersection and the power of our technology to shape our world and the power

Varieties of Wild Imagination

67

of nature to reshape us, politics was immediate and, if understood, inevitable. The question remains, however, how do we access what I would call the naivete of wild imagination? If we seek the place of power and politics in the world, it seems almost unavoidable to import pre-judgments about politics and power which already truncates our ability to imagine. In the writing that follows the attempt is to present what a naïve disposition requires.

The Naïve Disposition I begin by offering a distinction my wife, the forest ecologist Kathryn BlumenfeldJones, makes between what she terms a “naturalist” stance toward a forest and a “scientist” stance toward that same forest. I had asked her how she had, in her first, year-long stint at the Berenty Reserve in southeastern Madagascar, performed both animal behavior research and forest ecological research, given the intensity of both endeavors. Berenty Reserve is a private wildlife reserve held by the de Heaulme family. It is a riparian forest which, away from the river, turns into an arid forest. It is surrounded by a sisal plantation owned by the de Heaulme family. The reserve protects troops of ring-tailed lemurs (native to the area), sifaka lemurs (also native), brown lemurs (not native but introduced, by accident, to the reserve), and other lemurs (also native and less numerous). She had, in that year, spent a good deal of the year following specific troops of ring-tailed lemurs as they moved through the forest within their established territories. There were very few trails made by human beings through the forest so that doing what are termed “all-day follows” meant going where the lemurs went, no matter how difficult. While she did these behavioral studies of eating, sleeping, mating, raising of the young, protecting territory, she also made time to map the forest botany (trees, shrubs, and so forth) by gridding the forest into an imaginary graph paper image and then, recording each plant and tree that grew within each grid. This thorough map aided in making sense of where the different troops resided in the forest, how they lived within their territories and how they interacted in and out of those territories. This work was a matter of looking and seeing what was there. One day, during her lemur behavior observations, while following one troop, she noticed another male ring-tailed lemur who was out of place (belonged to a different troop and, therefore, different territory). This piqued her interest. She proceeded to study this out-of-place male and his relationship to the troop she was following. Eventually, she addressed a question that had been on the minds of other lemur scientists. Given that lemurs are a matriarchal social structure, and the troops tend to stay very separate from each other, how did the gene pool within a troop stay refreshed? It had been surmised that there might be transfer between troops, but no one had ever seen it. She was able to document this transfer with this male’s behavior. What is the point of this description? I have indicated that she distinguishes between a “naturalist” and a “scientist.” Her distinction is as follows. A scientist pursues her/his work through posing questions about phenomena and then pursuing

68

4 Wild Imagination and the Critical Project

answers to those questions. The questions are present before the looking begins. The questions automatically narrow how the scientist views the object of inquiry as well as what s/he “sees.” What is not pertinent to the question is literally “not seen.” The “naturalist,” on the other hand, goes into the setting (in this case the lemur reserve) with no particular need to see. S/he is just there to see what is interesting, what will attract her/his attention. The naturalist is not driven by questions but by curiosity. S/he can never predict what will be interesting or seen as anomalous. At the same time, the forest ecologist sees the entire forest and its animal inhabitants as living within a complex system. This system, in order to be “understood,” requires the inquirer to see past the elements of the system to that which holds the whole together. To see systemically means to see the perturbations in the system as signs of how the system works. To do this, however, requires staying attuned to the possibility of a system you cannot, necessarily, comprehend in its entirety without immersion in the whole with an eye to the whole. When Kathryn Blumenfeld-Jones saw that male, she had not been pursuing the question of troop transfer or genetic pool refreshing. She was just in the forest, following her troop to see what she could see. The lemurs lived within the whole system of the reserve as well as within their various troop territories. The appearance of the lone male lemur was one of those perturbations in the system. Notice that the question of why that particular lemur was out-of-place (away from his troop and in an area in which he didn’t belong and how he, and the troop who “owned” the area would interact and resolve the inevitable tensions a “foreigner” brought into the place) arose after she noted his presence, after his being out of place called attention to the whole system by being out of place in the system. As always, as a naturalist, she was “looking broadly” while also focusing on “her” troop. The ability to be without questions, at least initially, allowed her to see what someone, with questions, might have missed because that person was already looking for what s/he knew was there, only refining that knowledge through closer and closer examination of an already finite situation. It is also important to note that Blumenfeld-Jones is a trained scientist. That is, she has the skill-set of a scientist so that “seeing” could become something, given her knowledge of the basic living arrangements of ring-tailed lemurs and the eco-system of the forest. In this case, her noticing required her to “follow” this lone male to piece together his relationship to his troop, his territory, and the larger forest. Without this, she could not have cogently uncovered the transfer from one troop to another. Just so, Curriculum Studies has been, from the beginning, consistently driven by a “scientistic” mindset. The founders of the curriculum field, as already noted in Chapter 3 (Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom) and Chapter 9 (Reimagining Time), were firmly lodged in the progressivist social movement which saw its approach as scientific, grounded in what they already believed and then finding the right techniques for fulfilling it. The interregnum reconceptualization, as also already noted in the dialectical unlearning chapter, eschewed scientism altogether. But science, in the way described by Blumenfeld-Jones, remains a dominant way of inquiry: the sense of questions whose answers are already known and then ways of fulfilling those answers are developed. Even today’s social justice advocates, driven

Varieties of Wild Imagination

69

by pre-determined social justice questions, fulfill the idea of being “scientists” in our field as they tend to know the answers to the questions they wish to pursue. The idea of being surprised by one’s inquiry is less important than finding out what they already know they need to know. They may make significant discoveries, but those discoveries are already pointed in a particular direction. To repeat, if core to a critical project is self-critique and openness to disconfirmation (as asserted, argued, and developed in Chapter 3), then the stance of the “naturalist,” of the wild imaginer is the stance that yields the openness. Both kinds of inquiry are necessary but, for the most part, there is little evidence of the stance of “wild imagination” in Curriculum Studies. Wild Imagination begins in humility and yields to the smallest element in an environment which may reveal a significance you could never predict as long as you already went in with the questions you wanted to answer. This next example epitomizes this idea of paying attention to even the smallest element in an environment (what Bourdieu termed “very mundane, if not derisory, empirical objects,” see Chapter 3 for more) which may yield something of significance and having a sense of play. It comes from the world of Richard Feynman (1999), the Nobel Prize winner in physics, who described how he came to win the prize. He was, at the time of this story, teaching at Cornell University. I decided I was only going to do things for the fun of it and only that afternoon as I was taking lunch some kid threw up a plate in the cafeteria. There was a blue medallion on the plate, the Cornell sign. As the plate came down it wobbled. It seemed to me that the blue thing went round faster than the wobble and I wondered what the relationship was between the two. I was just playing; no importance at all. So, I played around with the equations of motion of rotating things and I found out that if the wobble is small the blue thing goes round twice as fast as the wobble. I tried to figure out why that was, just for the fun of it, and this led me to the similar problems in the spin of an electron and that led me back into quantum electrodynamics which is the problem I’d been working on. I continued to play with it in this relaxed fashion and it was like letting a cork out of a bottle. Everything just poured out and in very short order I worked the things out for which I later won the Nobel Prize. (Robinson, 2011, pp. 30–31)

As with the image of the naturalist, Feynman was just looking at the world with no particular interest in any part of it. He was looking globally. As he “saw” this strange event, strange to him who noticed, not strange to anyone else, he began to ask questions about it. He didn’t import questions into the situation but allowed the situation to speak to him. In a sense, the “scientist” as described by Kathryn Blumenfeld-Jones, might not have seen the question in this plate because s/he has already broken up the world into pieces in which s/he is interested. Anything outside that grid didn’t exist for him or her. And, as with her, Feynman had his skill as a scientist to support his exploration of this unexpected question. But, first, there had to be noticing. What does this mean for the Curriculum Studies scholar’s deployment of imagination. The Curriculum Studies scholar must notice the world, just as Blumenfeld-Jones and Feynman did. In a study of three classroom teachers (Blumenfeld-Jones, 1996) one day while doing observations in one of the classrooms (an eighth-grade English class), a young man entered the room who clearly didn’t belong. He had sneaked into the school (had already moved on to high school) in order to visit this teacher whom he liked. His presence of being out of order

70

4 Wild Imagination and the Critical Project

in the system and the teacher’s welcoming response to his visit (which may have been quite different had she been either a non-nurturing man or woman [either of whom might nurture in different ways based on learned gender roles or simply a different kind of teacher) highlighted the whole of the classroom system by his being “out of place.” Further, how did his entrance into an environment organized in a particular way highlight elements of that environment and system not previously noticed? How did it disrupt, if indeed it did so? Did it show that the so-called organized environment might itself be cacophonous, but I didn’t notice it prior to this disruption? Or did the entrance of this student reveal how the teacher dealt with interruptions to the so-called smooth functioning of the system so that the disruption became folded into the situation (just as the male lemur eventually joined the new troop, thus returning the system to its balance)? This teacher tended to cultivate cacophony but only within limits. What were those limits and how did she deal with the entrance of this student, which was taken as a disruption, without shutting off the student’s free spirit, which she clearly esteemed? The situation became a dialectic of cacophony and control. This might never have been apparent had I not “allowed” this disruption into my understanding. Some researchers might simply dismiss this as a momentary but not valuable disruption. I treated it, as I did everything that occurred, as important to my understanding. A graduate student who was aiding me in this research visited one of our classrooms and reported back, after her first visit, that nothing was going on. Further, she didn’t like this teacher. I was shocked. I told her: “Something is always going on. Your task is not to like or dislike, not to already decide what was important and what was not important. Your task is to be a camera, to absorb everything, without prejudice. See what is there rather than what you wish was there. Go back. That classroom is teeming with life.” Take a naturalist’s stance. Take an artist’s stance. The world is filled with the opportunity only available if you don’t edit the world. With this image in mind, if we were to see the world as a visual, motional, aural cacophony within which artists and the above-discussed scientists live (think of a classroom or curriculum meeting or how a curriculum becomes enacted as having such cacophony), then something can emerge as highlighting some previously unnoticed feature of the system which raises questions that ask to be answered. “Ask to be answered.” This is also central. Many questions may arise which are potential cohering moments for the doing of science, the making of art and the doing of Curriculum Studies scholarship. It is the openness to questions not yet asked that marks the kind of imagination being presented here. It is the case that how an individual chooses what questions to address is certainly located in the personal life of s/he who notices. But that personal life is distilled through her/his skill as an artist, as a scientist, as a Curriculum Studies scholar. It is also distilled through the culture in which the artist, the scientist, and the Curriculum Studies scholar exists as to what the culture might deem important or worthy of attention. We must also notice that culture and not allow it to entirely control our noticing. This is no criticism of “scientists,” but it does draw an important distinction that has meaning for this present project of wild imagination. As with the naturalist, so with some, perhaps most, artists or Curriculum Studies scholars. While there are, of

Varieties of Wild Imagination

71

course, many “kinds” of artists and Curriculum Studies scholars who pursue their individual work through different methods, in my estimation, it is possible to see each of them as a naturalist of her/his world. Each is, or could be, curious about the world in a global manner, always wondering at what s/he “sees” (or takes in through some other modality) and making her/his work based on that wonder. Even when the artist or Curriculum Studies scholar is making a piece (a sculpture, a painting, a dance, a musical composition, a poem, a theory-driven writing or enacting a particular curriculum or whatever else), that piece can be grounded in wondering about the world and having the world present a question of which s/he wasn’t previously aware. The artist or Curriculum Studies scholar notices something that may appear to be out of place. The artist or Curriculum Studies scholar may be piqued by something that just stands out to him or her against the background of the rest of the world. The artist or Curriculum Studies scholar notices and wonders. I have kept “artist” in this discussion because I want the Curriculum Studies scholar to understand her/himself as an artist in a parallel fashion to the way artists work in the world: immersed in the materiality and reality of the world rather than in a constellation of ideas divorced from the physical medium of life. What does all this, more specifically, have to do with politics and power? With Kathryn Blumenfeld-Jones, it has to do with not caring about what the world thought. It is an openness to the world in a way that relieves her of any pressure to “see the way a scientist sees.” It is immersion in the minutiae of the world and how the power of the world and its relationships draws her attention, rather than importing into the world a proper understanding of the power relationships and then, looking. With Feynman, an already established and respected physicist, it was living according to where his imagination and interest took him because the world had accorded him the right to do as he wished, given his accomplishments of the time. Nevertheless, in both these situations, these “naturalists” of the world remained open to questions from the world, remained open to a world that was not predictable. For the artist-Curriculum Studies scholar, it can be living from a place of wonder about everything, until something calls her/his attention and then exploring, in the way the particular artist explores, that “something,” fashioning an art-object or Curriculum Studies exploration that is both a vehicle for exploring and a vehicle for communicating what is discovered in the course of such exploration. Something must be said of the cultivation of skill. The two science examples were of scientists highly skilled and knowledgeable about the work they were doing. Their personal skill resources were fundamental to the eventual outcomes of their work. But, the “skill” of noticing, of play, of just being present, was not a “skill” taught to them in their science education. This they cultivated within themselves. As with scientists, so with artist researchers and Curriculum Studies scholars wanting to cultivate wild imagination within her or himself. Wild imagination is not mere happenstance. Disposition for noticing is something to be cultivated as with the skill to deploy that noticing into fruitful avenues. We might consider educating for such openness to events, such naivete as well as educating for skill. With these images in mind, we turn to multiple understandings of “imagination” to better understand what is this capacity. Once this exploration is completed, I will

72

4 Wild Imagination and the Critical Project

present two examples of how I deploy art and imagination addressing curriculum thinking and actions to uncover what was previously invisible as well as a more straightforward Curriculum Studies work presented that also deploys wild imagination. Along the way “radical imagination” will be discussed as one species of imagination which, because of its agenda-laden perspective, is incapable of such noticing and releasing of, to use Alice Miel’s word, “crystallization.” (See Chapter 3 for more on Miel.) In what follows, unlike some of the other chapters, this chapter is not about building a case linearly. Rather, it is about presenting a set of ideas and each reader will build her/his own case.

Uses of Imagination There are many “kinds” of imagination. Penelope Murray, in her book on the history of the imagination in the West, notes that, Imagination has come to mean, among other things, the freedom of the mind … exercised in innumerable ways, without necessarily becoming separated from logic and empirical observation. There is a conceptual imagination, a moral imagination, an imagination of the heart; there is … a ludic imagination, a playful imagination which helps us to bear the responsibilities of all the rest. There is the imagination of order and form.” (Murray, 1991, pp. 280–281)

Notice that Murray links “freedom” with “imagination” by saying that imagination is equivalent to “freedom of the mind.” As this is core to this book, a closer examination of her avowal is necessary. Murray puts this linkage in terms of not “necessarily separated from logic and empirical observation.” She seems to be protecting imagination from being simply a mental fantasy. As I hope is apparent so far, imagination is always grounded in empirical observation. (See Chapter 6 for further analysis of the imagination/physical reality nexus.) So, this “saving” of imagination from dismissal as merely mental, although well placed in terms of social attitudes is, also, in a sense, unnecessary. Using logic to save the freedom of imagination does seem improper as I have tried to show that logic has nothing to do with imagination unless logic is understood more broadly as simply a descriptor for some form of orderliness. Then imagination would have its own logic that differs from rational logic (the typical use of the term logic). As such, then, we should keep imagination within the human panoply of possible dispositions toward the world that holds an equal place to reason and logic rather than being legitimated by reason and logic. What are the possible “uses” of imagination or freedom of mind? Murray provides a list. We are free to imagine a concept (ironically such as “imagination”), to use imagination to come to a moral decision and/or action (see Mark Johnson’s Moral Imagination, 1994), to “feel” emotionally in an imaginal state and, lastly, to be ludic (meaning “playful”), often suffusing early childhood education only to be displaced, curricularly, by so-called serious study. This last shift, curricular in character, is a mistaken view of play which is discussed by Han-Georg Gadamer in his book Truth and Method (2004) on hermeneutic interpretation. Gadamer makes play central to

Uses of Imagination

73

the act of interpretation, referencing both the process and “features” of children’s play as exemplary for imagination in the act of interpretation and “play” as both a theater artist and artists practicing the so-called “fine arts” understand it.

Hans-Georg Gadamer and Embodied Imagination Gadamer writes that “for the player play is not serious: that is why he [sic] plays…. what is merely play is not serious” (p. 91). What does he mean? He notes that “we play ‘for the sake of recreation’” but that in this recreation there is a re-creation of the self which gives to play “its own, even sacred, seriousness” (p. 91). For play to succeed at this re-creation, “[t]he player himself [must] know that play is only play … exists in a world which is determined by the seriousness of purposes” (p. 91). That is, for play to be of value, it must be undertaken seriously but not with a serious attitude. Re-creation of the self is serious, but it can only be pursued by the “play [being] only play.” This is quintessential dialectical thinking. Play is only fulfilled by “the player los[ing] himself [sic] in his play.” And “… play has no goal,” otherwise it stops being play. Just so with wild imagination, it has no goal. “The self-representation of the game involves the player’s achieving … his own self-representation by playing, i.e., representing something.” Wild imagination represents the self of the imaginer in her/his interactions with the world and what they mean to him or her. In this way, wild imagination isn’t only about discovering something in the world but also about a self-representation that discovers oneself. In my descriptions of “Hogan Dreams” and “Trois Chaises,” at the end of this chapter, I learn about myself in relation to the objects of my inquiry. In so doing this shows the ways in which our play of imagination in the world is both about revealing something that we all might “see” if only we would let go of our preconceptions of what is there and about our relationship to that which is “seen.” It reveals the interleaving of world and self at all moments as the self is transformed even as the world is known. This may be a problem for most Curriculum Studies scholars, including the dominant social justice approaches to Curriculum Studies. Conventionally, Curriculum Studies scholars are not there to be transformed but to transform others. A graduate student approached me about using ABER approaches to inquiry to make her study participant’s stories about their troubles in a world that marginalized them as not normal, be better heard. She didn’t want to learn anything either about herself or those participants. She already knew what she knew, and she merely wanted an attractive mode for representing them. She was seeking change not for herself but only change of others, which, as she sees it, better serves her clients. This is a “frozen” image that cannot be art or, in terms of this chapter, adequate Curriculum Studies scholarship, which, requires letting go of what we know if we are to be transformed. Gadamer tells us that making art is taking something we experience in the world and transforming it into a structure. So, too, we might say this of Curriculum Studies work. We transform our experiences into theories and descriptions of the curriculum. For play Gadamer goes beyond this:

74

4 Wild Imagination and the Critical Project Transformation into a structure is not simply transposition into another world. Certainly it is another, closed world in which the play takes place. … it is a structure [that has] found its measure in itself and measures itself by nothing outside it.” (p. 101)

He means, by this, that the object we make is not simply a representation of the so-called “real” world but is a world unto itself that “finds its measure [in] nothing outside itself.” (This may be said of “pure imagination.” See Chapter 6 for more on pure imagination.) It is the ratios between elements in that world, the music of words, the way a set of theoretical propositions scintillate together that is the location of what Gadamer calls “the joy of knowledge.” If we think that each element must map onto the so-called real world, then we lose the value of imagination as existing in its own world that, through the experience of that world, “tells” us something about this real world. So, too, whatever elegance there is in the theory made does map onto the real world and illuminates it in new ways. If that theory is a result of experiences in the physical world, then the theory can map onto the world in new ways if it is, itself, genuinely new through these acts of play and wild imagination. But the theory must stem from the experiences in the new world and not be merely a play of fantasy with no relationship to the world from which it came. So, in an earlier writing (2016) I critiqued a scholar for putting rhizomatics and roots in the same curriculum thinking. I pointed out that the rhizome was a thoroughly different biological entity from the root, in some ways contradicting the idea of roots and vice versa. By conflating them any salience of the theory was compromised. The theorist was playing but ineffectively. She was just using words in a way that seemed simply an adoption of popular positions without thinking about the meaning of those words. There could be no “joy of knowledge” because the knowledge could not return to the lived world and illuminate it in any new way. I can speak to the act of play in the naturalist stance in the writing of this book. Writing this book has been an experience of, in some cases, not quite knowing what I wanted to write or attempt to communicate. In some cases, I didn’t even know what I thought. The act of opening into the writing/thinking revealed ideas of which I had no idea they existed. I was a naturalist among these ideas. Just so, when I write a poem or choreograph a dance, it reveals something to me through the action of the play with words, sound, motion but felt in my body, not only my mind. I do not make the revelation happen. It happens within the art emerging, and I am surprised by the emergence, and I know it to be a truth. The bodily experience leads me to the poem’s rightness. (See the discussion below of one of the “Principal’s Songs” in the “Hogan Dreams” for more elaboration on all of this.) This bodily experience leads to an inescapable axiom: imagination is always profoundly bodily/embodied. While there are certainly “mental” images that count as imagination, without a bodily “feeling” such imaginative renderings are empty of content. That is, it is impossible to have an imaginative moment and not have a bodily feeling during that moment. This assertion does not depend on living a special life (such as a dance life) in which only special people are capable of bodily imagination. We live in a culture that drives a wedge between our bodies and our imagination and values only the most bloodless forms of imagination as having any meaning. On the other hand, it is possible, with some effort, to notice the wholeness of our imaginative responses to the world and warrant their “truth” in all dimensions of our experience.

Uses of Imagination

75

Wild Imagination, the Equal of Reason and More … We must also acknowledge that, in addition to the issue of negating bodily knowing, imagination of any sort has been remanded to the backbenches of Western culture in favor of cognition and reason. However, this marginalization has not been entirely successful. In this regard, Murray (1991) notes that as early as Roger Bacon, there was a movement away from such cognitive privileging. She situates Bacon within the context of a Platonic view and Neo-Platonic view. The Platonic view saw the imagination as a fantasy separate from reason (and lesser than reason). The NeoPlatonist view saw imagination as “communicating truths and insights which are irrational - above reason, alongside reason, or below reason,” (pp. 268–269) as a messenger carrying information from the mind that then needs parsing and translating into the true world of words and ideas. Against these formulations Bacon wrote: Neither is the imagination simply and only a messenger; but is invested with or at leastwise usurpeth no small authority in itself, besides the duty of the message. For it was well said by Aristotle, that the mind hath over the body that commandment, which the lord hath over a bondman; but that reason hath over the imagination that commandment which a magistrate hath over a free citizen; who may come also to rule in his turn.” (p. 268)

Bacon is suggesting that the imagination, rather than a servant to reason has its own independent function that is equal to reason. Wild imagination assumes a parallel premise: to imagine is to inhabit the world in a way different from inhabiting through reason. Imagination is not a matter of revealing what the intellect knows by simply dressing reason in more attractive clothing. Given this, we can either expand the idea of “reason” and then ask rationalists to define their particular form of reason or recognize imagination as not reason but, nonetheless, a valid form of knowing that leads to “insights” and “relationships to” that are unique to its way of knowing. The purpose here is to do more than simply elevate the status of imagination. It is to “describe” imagination and its workings without reference to Murray’s ascription of imagination as “imagination of X.” Wild imagination doesn’t know what will be imagined and, therefore, cannot know the X that will be imagined. Perhaps a better term is “untethered imagination.” I am preferring wild imagination for its connotations of being in a world that speaks back to us its natural, uncontrolled status as well as our imaginations being living experiences of such openness.

Levinas and Pre-States of Bodily Imagination Nietzsche is quoted by Murray as follows: ‘Metaphor, for the authentic poet, is not a figure of rhetoric but a representative image standing concretely before him in lieu of a concept.’ (p. 275)

Here, the imagination is not mere rhetoric but is an experienced event as real as any event that is supposedly “real.” “In lieu of a concept” means non-verbal concreteness

76

4 Wild Imagination and the Critical Project

that carries meaning and locates the imaginer in a very particular way in the world around her/him. If this cannot be put into words, it does not make it any less correct or real. I have already discussed, in other parts of this book (for instance, in Chapter 2, “Mosaical Thinking”) Levinas’s idea of pre-states of experience prior to concrete knowing or “knowing what I do not yet know” with the latter “knowing” being words, labels, and categories I use to tell another what I know and the prior “knowing” being a knowing that has not yet congealed into such words, labels, and categories. This idea of “knowing what I do not yet know” is definitional of imagination. In a certain manner, this “knowing,” this “awareness” is what I term “wild.” I find a flower growing in the field or forest that I did not actively plant, although I may, subsequently, actively nourish and nurture it. I do not know of the existence of this flower prior to finding it. Once found and fixed with a name, it becomes grounded in “me” and, therefore, does not present me with new possibilities. But I do rely upon my pre-conscious bodily knowing/state of sensibility to bring something “fresh” to me, a “new” organization of the “old.” The flower is old (I know its name) but new (I didn’t know it but encountered as a surprise). I approach the possibility of there being a flower but not even expecting that there will be a flower. I stay open to whatever is around the corner without pre-deciding what is around the corner. The flower is not connected to any plans except “something will happen.” If I am truly aware of the fecundity of this possible moment and can “let go” of preconceptions, the moment of the flower presents the possibility of new connections (at least new to me) that may instruct or guide me going forward. As with this flower, so with encountering any scene in the world, any moment that is curricular, not as if I know it but that I do not know it until it is there. I may, eventually, place it within my sphere of understanding, but if I can “slow down” I may “know” it for its status as separate from what I already know. (See Chapter 9 for more on the idea of slowing down and time.) When I speak/write/think of imagination it is this: it is all by itself, has no specific form but is an honoring of an availability and a willingness to entertain the “wild,” the “crazy,” the “not-before-seen.” It is acting on an instinctual level, a gut level, a “what the hell” level. It doesn’t always “work.” What does it mean that it “doesn’t always ‘work’”? It does not mean that you notice prior to an event that you have made an intellectual move of understanding where you almost feel you are watching yourself. That kind of outsidedeness, that non-habitation feeling, is not imagination for part of you is held back from the experience. On the other hand, in imagination, you are immersed in the “image,” the “idea” that is non-cognitive. You may, subsequently, “notice” that you have inhabited, and you may even “translate” the inhabitation into transferable-to-other-words, but these “words” are not the imagination itself but grow out of imagination. When I wrote “Hogan Dreams” I discovered, well after the writing, that “weather” was a pervasive component of my experience during both the actual curriculum project to which I was attached as well as the writing that became “Hogan Dreams.” Even now I don’t know why weather was so important, but I trust it because it “feels right” to me. It provides a place of place, non-intellectual. When I discovered how weather was thematized, this noticing was well after the fact of the thematization. It was not imagination. But, the arising of weather, unbidden,

Uses of Imagination

77

unnoticed as such but just pursued because whatever “it” was felt right, that was clear without knowing why it was clear. It was just, to echo Nietzsche, the right music. Not everything has to be “clear” and certain. The flavor, the sensation, the nebula of knowing is enough for me. This is what I seek in imagination overall: the “feeling tone” of X, received through my body. As Frost put it about knowing that a poem worked, it made his toes twinkle. This is imagination.

Practicing Wild Imagination as a Critical Project I begin with this: when I choreograph, I imagine a certain movement and quality and with this, I begin to actually move. I feel, in my mind, the quality and I try to find that quality in the actuality of my movement. I “test” in my mind various variations of the movement. I taste the quality. As I experiment “mentally” and “physically” with the movement I seek to “feel” something, feel something that “feels” right. This feeling is not intellectual but is intelligent. I know when I find what I seek, but not because the movement “feels right” in the doing but, rather, it “feels right” in the inner state it raises before me. I, often, do not know what I seek as I begin nor when I find the right movement and its quality do I always know what it is about that movement and quality that is “right.” I just “feels” right, and I go with it and try to maintain the quality as I spin out motion and begin to build the choreography. This is the case whether it is solo choreography or group choreography. With group choreography we have the additional difficulty of shaping the space and the viewer’s eye as that eye scans the dance, sees the whole space and where the dancers are in that space and in what relationship they stand to each other. That is, the dancers, placed where they are in the space, bring the space to view in particular configurations that illuminate the space which is part of the choreography. The space dances as well. And I “dance” with it all, inside my body. I “feel” the space/motion/time of the dance and work to create something that is in line with what I was feeling and “speaks” to it. What has this to do with the critical project? Within the process of choreography, the unfolding feeling state/qualities and what they might mean initiate ideas for building the choreography. In the critical project we might viscerally “feel” the unfolding situation and elements as lived experiences (not abstractions with no material referent) and determine what is being uncovered/discovered about the way we live. Pierre Bourdieu’s work (1977) is exemplary of this idea of a viscerally lived model. As an example from his work, Bourdieu, in attempting to understand one of his core ideas, practice, uses the model of a map to image, in a full way, how we live in practical terms, rather than in intellectual abstractions. He writes of anthropologists who make kinship maps. Bourdieu tells us that anthropologists think these maps represent something lived. Bourdieu, however, demurs and writes, The logical relationships constructed by the anthropologist are opposed to ‘practical relationships’ – practical because continuously practiced, kept up, and cultivated – in the same way as the geometrical space of a map, an imaginary representation of all theoretically possible roads and routes. Opposed to the network of beaten tracks, of paths made ever more

78

4 Wild Imagination and the Critical Project practicable by constant use…. the complete network of kinship relations … exist only as theoretical objects exist … as a totality present in simultaneity.” (p. 38)

The image of “network of beaten tracks, of paths made ever more practicable by constant us” is a concrete lived experience that is an internalized set of practical responses to the uses of kinship in everyday life. These tracks and paths are not the complete map of kinships but, rather, lived ways traveled on a daily basis that helps the person get through the day in an appropriate manner. No one actually lives within knowledge of “the complete network of kinship relations” (denoted by the anthropologists’ maps) which “exist only as theoretical objects … as a totality present in simultaneity.” All the elements of the map may be simultaneously visible in the official kinship map, but they do not lead the practice of living (those tracks and paths). We might liken this idea to walking on a university campus. There is the official map of the campus with its walkways and roads and then there is the lived experience of people walking not on the walkways but cutting across lawns as a habit and practice of moving about the map. The crushed grass of the lawns, the informal walkways created by people not responding to the official map but to their internalized map of how to practically get around the world, those are the “network of beaten tracks, of paths made ever more practicable by constant use.” Bourdieu, within the scope of a few words of visceral physicality (we all know what a map is, and we all understand “the network of beaten tracks”), presents an abstract theory about practice in a way that transcends even the map and extra-map images. They are not intellectual abstractions but lived experiences. This play goes immediately to the core of self-hood in the world as declared by Gadamer in reference to play. In this sense Bourdieu’s presentation is a reflection of how we play in the world. In the scope of Bourdieu’s project to make the “idea” of practice a more “accurate” way of understanding how we negotiate our social terrain, he plays, constantly, through immediacy of imagination. It is not merely illustrative but is core to what he wants us to understand. His is a critical project because he tries to get to some roots of social life, some base lived experience which isn’t an intellectual totalizing of a scheme that, while it might be able to show something general, does not speak to how we live in that reality. So, too, Blumenfeld-Jones in her forest and Feynman in his laboratory stimulated by something seemingly mundane, lived in the immediacy of their worlds and, out of that immediacy and a wholeness of the elements of the world around them, practiced a willingness to play in response to the world rather than an imposition of already made understandings about the world, and, in this, found something others had not “seen.”

Radical Imagination: Not Wild Enough Given that imagination as a concept appears in the social justice literature, I want to address the concept of “radical imagination” which is associated with its contemporary critical project. Radical imagination is different from what I have been describing. Zeus Leonardo (2004) wrote of it as follows:

Practicing Wild Imagination as a Critical Project

79

Dreaming is not the idle activity that a realist and positivist schooling discourse may consider a sign of a mind gone awry. In Freire’s conversations with Cabral, [he] discussed … dreaming in the process of real change … “How poor is a revolution that doesn’t dream!” (see Darder, 2000, p. 93)…. dreaming is …. the necessary projection of the radical imagination. Kincheloe (1993) has suggested that educators can teach students … to dream as part of teacher education courses. Dreaming spurs people to act, if by dreaming we mean a sincere search for alternatives and not the evasion of reality. It is not always an unconscious act, but a metaphor for social intervention that moves the critical social theorist from analysis to commitment. (p. 15)

“Radical imagination” is characterized here as “dreaming.” Note, dreaming is a dialectical affair. On the one hand, when we dream while asleep, we are not active participants but, rather, witnesses of the dream as it unfolds. On the other hand, dreams don’t simply happen without us. They are our minds fabricating some scenario as a process of resolution of tensions, which is an action. In both senses, dreams are not, as characterized by Leonardo, an “evasion of reality.” They are a confrontation of reality in a fruitful way whose contours are not always immediately understood. We may come to some provisional understanding in our subsequent analysis of the meaning of the dream. But that “coming to understand” is not some final say as to the meaning of the dream. Rather it is one interpretation with potential for selfunderstanding. Such are dreams that they carry this power precisely because they are unedited products of our minds, rather than controlled fantasies. It might be said that Leonardo’s opprobrium about dreams misunderstands their potential by insisting that they be rationally acceptable visions of the future. This goes against the very character of dreaming. In short, Leonardo’s use of “dreaming” alters the character of dreaming by changing it from a spontaneous product of our minds to a dreaming (Freire’s dreaming, the idea of imagining a future you want) which “spurs people to action,” functioning as “a metaphor for social intervention that moves … from analysis to commitment.” Dreaming as conscious imagining based on what you already know goes against dreaming as a spontaneous product of our mind which carries possible information for us about ourselves and our relationships, becomes merely an inspiration for action. For Leonardo, once action takes place, the dream is left behind as the commitment becomes reality. As imagination has already been described, this does not qualify as imagination. It is a “linear” image that is, in some ways, anti-imagination, making imagination as a mere manipulation of people and an afterthought. More recently Henry Giroux (2013) has called for imagination in his op-ed piece entitled “When Schools Become Dead Zones of the Imagination: A Critical Pedagogy Manifesto”). He writes of the various uprisings on the part of teachers and others against the corporatization of education and states that, [W]e can only hope that such movements offer up not merely a new understanding of the relationship among pedagogy, politics, and democracy, but also one that infuses both the imagination and hope for a better world.

Giroux never defines what he means by “imagination,” but he connects it to “hope for a better world” suggesting a direction in which imagination should tend. Here, once again, imagination is utilitarian and not for its own revelations but as an inspiration to action. Imagination connected to an already known future world disables imagination

80

4 Wild Imagination and the Critical Project

from fulfilling its value. This is not to say that creativity and imagination are not connected to the world we inhabit and, therefore, affected by that world and all of its difficulties. But when we imagine other worlds beginning with a notion of “better” (often hidden from view within the rhetoric) we are already bent in a pre-known direction which may truncate the fecundity of imagination. To be clear, it is not that we enter a scene de novo. Feynman had his years of work as a physicist orienting him in the world. I had my years as a curriculum scholar orienting me in the curriculum projects with which I was working. As Gadamer might write, there can be no knowing without having known something first. To the degree that an imaginative moment may reveal something surprising, the ways in which we are surprised are also circumscribed by what we already know. What is revealed is revealed either from within the circle of the horizon of understanding (a hermeneutic concept), showing new dimensions of the familiar in different ways or from the edge of the horizon where something unfamiliar is impinging upon the horizon. Imagistically, perhaps it is some hand reaching from out of the dark or cuff of a shirt peeking from underneath a coat. That cuff, that hand may shake what we thought were the limits of our knowing. If we make ourselves available to that cuff or arm as something foreign, strange, surprising, disconfirming, or dissonant, we may possibly taste something of what doesn’t belong. If we oscillate between our pre-knowing that Gadamer says we always carry with us and what pings our consciousness just before it is known (Levinas’ pre-sensing before congealing into signs denoting sensory experience, see Chapter 2 for more), we may find something “new.” We can never know the object of our interest in some purity separate from what we already know but we may, also, be jarred into something for which we were not prepared and in whose direction we were not tending. The problem with radical imagination is a lack of awareness of these difficulties and a lack of awareness that there is something outside their projects.

Examples of Wild Imagination in Curriculum Studies The explorations from Gadamer, Levinas, Bacon, Murray, Blumenfeld-Jones (K.), Feynman, and Nietzsche set the stage for presenting some concrete examples of wild imagination applied to curriculum thinking.

Hogan Dreams “Hogan Dreams” (Blumenfeld-Jones, 2004/2012b) is a song-cycle interspersed with theoretical musings and prose-poems. It was my response to a Navajo curriculum project on which I was the project evaluator for purposes of reporting to the granting organization how the project had proceeded. My role became so much more as I became fascinated with the power dynamics of the group that was putting together

Examples of Wild Imagination in Curriculum Studies

81

a grant proposal to support the curriculum project. In the end, I found myself responding to the project through my poet self. As the poems and prose-poems emerged over the course of the writing, I “discovered” dimensions of the world that, had I taken a more straightforward approach to the project (even in poetry), I would likely never have discovered these dimensions. This project is an example of wild imagination before I theorized such a possibility. The first poem that came to me (“The Principal’s Regret,” p. 359) began the whole process of making “Hogan Dreams” and in its process of coming to be, was a harbinger of the whole process of making this work. The Principal’s Regret Apple trees are funny. They grow up to find They are not orange trees.

When I discovered this poem, I knew immediately that I had something. The poem came to me unbidden while I was contemplating whether or not to participate in a book project being put together by two colleagues. They wanted me to dance for the project. I didn’t want to dance. I kept thinking about this Navajo project which had so captured my attention in ways I could hardly express. And then, one day, while thinking about my potential participation and this curriculum work, I suddenly “knew” this poem. I knew it almost completely. It was just there. I “felt” it. But I did not know it because it comported with something I thought about the Principal and then found the words for it. Rather, it emerged, almost whole cloth, in my mind and I knew it was right. It just felt right. Did I make adjustments to the original poem? Yes, I did. But those adjustments were only skill applied to something that presented itself to me and the skill tightened it (in this case tightening, since loosening is always an option), compressed it toward a form that I thought benefited the original impulse. But the original impulse, that came from an openness as to outcome. Notice that the Principal is never mentioned in the poem. The image of an orange tree and an apple tree are as much “about” the Principal as anything else might be “about” the Principal. But the presentation of these two trees, that just struck me. I had not been playing with unalike objects and these two became the ones upon which I settled. I didn’t even know I was seeking unalike objects. What I knew of him was how he had been described to me and my own encounters with him during the project. He had been described to me as “more Navajo than the Navajo” before I had ever met him. Once I met him, I saw in him an insistence of his knowledgeableness of Navajoness, his insistence that his knowledge gave him the right to label some Navajos as not worthy of being called Navajo. And yet, he wasn’t and couldn’t be an enrolled member of the tribe because he actually wasn’t Navajo. I had found him thinking himself a great visionary when I thought he seemed to be merely autocratic. Oh yes, he had his disciples among the Navajo but, mostly, I felt they tolerated him for their own needs that he could fulfill. He thought he was one of them (he was not). He thought he understood them in deep ways that we mere non-Navajos would never understand. Lastly, I had found him arrogant and controlling as the politics of the

82

4 Wild Imagination and the Critical Project

committee were highly evident in how he assigned who would speak, who would not speak, how he would suddenly give a job to someone when someone else had that job, basically how he kept all of us off-center as his chaotic decisions functioned to keep the power in his hands. This was the kind of politics of which we usually think. But there was this desire, found in this song, to be one tree rather than the tree you are. It was in his insistence of being Navajo against all reality that I saw him as trying too hard to be something he would never be. But did I know all that I am now telling you? No. It was the poem as it initially presented to me that made me see this “truth” or what Gadamer calls “knowledge.” And this is what I think Gadamer means by play that has no stake in the world as it is and is transformation. The Principal is entirely transformed into these trees. Within that world he makes sense. Of course, he’s neither of these trees, not a tree at all. But for this to “work” I, and the reader, must be immersed in this other world. Within that new world, the relationships make sense. They belong to this other world. They do not belong to our world. For, what tree has the volition to be a different tree? Any volition at all? Of course, they don’t have volition. For you to participate in this play, you must believe, within that world, that trees do have volition. Only in this way can you become part of this new world, be transformed so that you can actually live this relationship that has no relationship to the world in which you do live. To put this succinctly in Gadamer’s words: “In the representation of play, what is emerges” (emphasis added, p. 101). What is the “is” that I found through this poem? I found the sadness of the apple tree that so wanted to not be an apple tree. I knew the sadness of wanting to be something so beautiful to him, the orange tree, which he would never, could never be. It was the sadness behind the words that attracted me. Do I know he was sad? I do not. In fact, until writing this chapter, I had not consciously thought of the sadness emotion. I felt longing, but not sadness. Now I feel sadness. My own transformation is to feel this poem and care more about him than I did before and to feel sadness and wonder about it within myself and my own issues with labels (such as “Navajo”) and what is at stake with them. Additionally, within the whole of “Hogan Dreams” this poem now seems to me to be a lynchpin, along with “August in the Land (STONES)” poem (to be discussed below), of the whole. That is, as small as this poem is, it is the only poem that does not speak of him from what I would call “the outside.” The other poems explore his way of politically controlling the project. As I wrote in the “Wild Imagination” chapter (2018), I did not much like him. I would never have noticed his sadness had I stayed within my mind, stayed in my political self, having to do with such questions as “who has power in this curriculum project?” and “how is power accrued?”. Those questions are “top-of-mind” questions, but they don’t enter into the humanness of any project. It was my availability to the image in the poem, my not knowing what “flower” was around the bend of my trek in a forest with sudden eruptions of wildflowers that allowed me to find this flower or to have this flower emerge. This poem is not about liking or not liking the Principal. It is about an inner life available only through this act of imagination. So, I “discovered,” in the deepest recesses of his self-hood, he was sad. Did he “over-compensate” (a psychological concept)? Did he try to gain a power he didn’t really have (a political concept)? Yes,

Examples of Wild Imagination in Curriculum Studies

83

perhaps. But, again, underneath all that bluster, there was this sad man. Was he truly pervasively sad? It matters not. There is a dimension of all of us that is sad, for any number of “reasons.” The reasons don’t matter. The sadness does matter. Why does the sadness matter? It matters because it moves past the typical political labeling we use in Curriculum Studies to identify friends and enemies in the fight for social justice (which is how I initially understood this curriculum project). It shows another dimension to the daily politics of this project, that of our shared existential condition. It does not necessarily exonerate the Principal from his actions which I might find heinous, but it does humanize him, and us, as we begin to understand the common implacability of circumstance that encloses each of us in circles that can be traps. It brings dimension to what seemed, at the time, as only a fight between camps as we each threw speeches at each other (speechifying in Buber’s language (1965), see Chapter 5 for more on this) in an effort to persuade and/or defeat the others. This affords the possibility of a different vision of freedom that might be brought to bear in some other curriculum project. The opening poem of the work speaks to another dimension of wild imagination (pp. 344–345). August in The Land (STONES) A dry sky Expands endlessly over brown mountains cuddled by sage green dry grass whose wisdom it is to survive. And those grasses, sparsely pocking the scraping dirt Dig deep, tapping their roots toward water. This is their survival. In a dry land, The fog drips heavily over straight edged, gray mesas, Lipping the greener desert in an alluring kiss That seems peaceful. This fog is here When the August skies are livid with rain. For how else could things survive? But be wary, For the water that comes from the wet sky Carries death As the floods crash washes With no resistance. Those foreign borne feel the power That greens the grass for a moment. The moment kills the one, survives the other.

84

4 Wild Imagination and the Critical Project Amongst the great rock ridges Shielding the grasses that greyly breath, Block homes neatly align under clustered cliffs, Appearing alone and happy. Small, quiet dirt, having nothing, everything. How do the people in the blinding flood? They dig deep and quiet. Like the grass. Yet I break through this land On a fast running black highway slower Than the still brown dirt that sweeps to a house, A hogan, truck and sheep. I feel wild in this blowing, fearful amidst the rocks Who say “I am here” as God to Moses in the burning Bush. He was afraid he could not survive. Here the wet rock is vermilion, Red, orange and mauve, the color of fire, Coldly moist and seething with lichen life Sitting for centuries waiting. I know no waiting, as I am in but not part Of this wet place, as I skitter across lightly Which is danger to some, survival to others. The grass is rooted, But there are those weeds which find a route Through the channels of earth Fetching up against the railed pasture. To live lightly in a dry land is to take What is offered in the spirit of hope, Seeing grandeur in the moments of survival. But what else can I do? I am not light, This rock, this grass, this spawning dirt Which appears dead but is beloved with a life which belongs. These are The People and I am, as always, The skittering wanderer who knows no place like this But respects the grass That grows for their survival.

This poem has literally nothing to do with the project. As I wrote in 2016, This poem was rooted in a trip I took with my family to the Grand Canyon North Rim through the Navajo Reservation across a road ringed with cliffs upon which hung dark storm clouds. I thought about my own lostness in the project. I thought about being a Jew. What connected my Jewishness, the storm clouds and people’s homes? Nothing I knew intellectually but a connection I felt which I could not (and cannot and will not) explain. (pp. 61–62)

Examples of Wild Imagination in Curriculum Studies

85

At the writing of this poem, these images flowed out of me without my knowing what they were. I felt the storm clouds, I felt the small homes, I felt the vermillion, red, mauve, orange of the cliffs and their imminent wetness as the clouds were ready to explode in rain. I felt the danger of it all. It was a dark beauty. I “knew” something but what I knew was not in words except it came out in words. The poem was, subsequently written and re-written, but its essence with which I had begun, my availability to those feelings and images, that did not change. It is as Buber has it, the image sacrificed on the altar of form. As Buber wrote: the artist’s response to the world “includes a sacrifice and a risk … the sacrifice: the endless possibility that is offered up on the altar of the form” (1958, p. 10). The form, the poem, is not the original impulse which gave rise to the poem, cannot encompass the complete fulness of that impulse. But it is that impulse, that noticing without noticing, without editing but being open, which gives rise to the unexpected, which this poem was. The implication of this poem is to bring to the fore the personal investments and strangenesses we all have as we pursue our curriculum projects. We can act “professionally” (demanding political redress for curricula that have harmed some and unfairly advantaged others) and we can understand the ways in which curriculum work is always personal. Even Kathryn Blumenfeld-Jones’ work in Madagascar was profoundly personal as she saw, and sees, the world as interconnected systems and beings, living together in various complicated relationships. For her that is a lived truth, not an intellectual distanced view. It is her version, as a naturalist, of wild imagination. For each of us, what we do with what we discover, that is up to each of us. But to not know of this, that seems, to me, nearly unethical in our practice. I have written that weather and geography were central themes to the work that I did not consciously notice and which I did not develop methodically as manipulations of a trope. I recall the ASU curriculum team driving to the school on the reservation for our first meeting. On the way we stopped at a pull-out to look at the landscape. The air, the sky, the distant mountains, the flat, sere, seemingly empty desert struck me. I remember how beautiful the reservation felt to me in its quiet but dark dignity. That experience embedded itself in me. It became part of the atmosphere that colored my feelings about being there, about the project, about the people of the project, about the children of the school. The Navajo people witnessed this landscape every day. For them it was “home.” I think now, what can “home” mean to them that would be different from what “home” means to me whose experiences in landscapes has been so different? These kinds of thoughts, feelings, and considerations become available when a person opens her/himself to an imagination response to an instantaneous moment. Such an imagination is being present, in a Levinasian pre-state of which I wrote earlier. I didn’t know what that landscape meant. I still don’t know what it means in any explicit sense, but I felt it and, at the time, felt strongly moved by it in an inchoate way that became discernible and found its way, in mood, into the writing. An act of imagination is always these two dimensions: the inchoate and the discernible simultaneously. Without the inchoate the discernible is just mechanical renderings. Without the discernible, the inchoate has no expression. Wild imagination is not about explanation but about experience.

86

4 Wild Imagination and the Critical Project

Trois Chaises This leads to “Trois Chaises” (Blumenfeld-Jones & Carlson, 2017). I had wanted to present to the ABER community a piece to examine the process of doing ABER. I created “Trois Chaises” to trace this process as it unfolded. As I pursued this project, the issue of “beingness” (power as in “able to be,” see the opening of this chapter) came into view in a way it had not in the original project on which this work was based. That original work was a straightforward field study (classroom observations, teacher background and conceptual interviews, and teacher interviews stimulated by further classroom observations) of three teachers and their ideas about the relationship between pleasure and education. As the study proceeded, questions of teacher authority (the authority of the teacher to form curricula, to organize a classroom, to protect the interests of learners over against the administration of the school) arose unbidden. It was my work to understand why all three teachers, unprompted, chose to talk about authority amid the topics of education and pleasure I had chosen. The original study was grounded in cultural models theory which asserts that we carry culturally encoded models of reality in our minds which we use to make sense of our experiences. Cultural models are discourse-based and encoded. To do this research one analyzes the talk of people to uncover the underlying cultural models being employed. It is a marriage of anthropological theory with the discourse theory of linguists such as George Lakoff. This study involved first, classroom observations to get a feel for how the teachers taught, as well as the context within which they taught (the classroom environment, physical and social, they created), second, an interview about their thinking on the topics of the study and, third, another interview based on my observing a particular day and conducting a stimulated recall interview about that day, especially as regards pleasure (and, as I say, in regard to their notions of authority). These interviews were then analyzed according to cultural models modalities of analysis. In the original study (two women and a man), the women emerged as much more sympathetic than the man. While I hope I didn’t make judgments, he was certainly the less sympathetic character in that study. Gender, as a central cultural divide, became an important distinction between the two women and the man. I interpreted the three of them through this lens. As I began reimagining this study, I tried to start with as clean an attitude as possible. I recalled that one of the women spoke of sitting in her big easy chair, on a rainy day, with her daughters in her lap, reading to them or sitting by herself, reading. For her this was quintessential pleasure. The other woman teacher spoke of sitting at the table with friends over a shared meal. The male teacher perched on a stool in front of his classroom, running his class discussions like one of the talk show hosts who had guests respond to audience questions, he with a “shotgun” mike he could point at audience members to make their questions or comments audible to all. All three spoke of chairs. Thus, the title “Trois Chaises.” If you ask, why the French for this, I can’t tell you, except that it “felt right” in a way “Three Chairs” didn’t feel

Examples of Wild Imagination in Curriculum Studies

87

right. I wanted to elevate those chairs into a theme/metaphor. What if I were to start with the idea of chairs, center the dancing around sitting? What would happen? Trying to start fresh, I asked myself “What if I didn’t know what I thought of these people, what might I then discover? What occurred surprised me. Along the way of making this dance/poetry/image piece I rediscovered the participants in my study and discovered a surprise about who they might have been. The women who were more or less “heroes” in the original study, were also tethered to difficulties and the man who I had seen as “wrong” became more understandable as a complex human being motivated by hidden desires he had preferred to keep hidden. And it’s not that this latter person possessed these desires but that he might have possessed them, and certainly human beings possess the paradoxes of desire (in this case a desire to “be in charge” not for the purpose of being “in charge” but for the purpose of pursuing a soaring world beyond our everydayness). Here is a link to the accompanying video of the piece: https://youtu.be/aStFZpijwno. The “politics” of this piece are grounded in “seeing” into other possible realities that my own ideological tendencies at the time of the first work, prevented me from encountering, what I termed in the IJEA article, “re-imagining” (discussed in some detail there). So much of politically inspired inquiry, it seems to me, is inspired by an initial sense of knowing in a way that may prevent one from seeing more deeply into the situation. My original field study had some of that arrogance. I really had always known that gender would be a major player in the situation. I had not known that each teacher would want to talk about authority, and I knew, when it arose over and over, that this was a topic that was somehow implicated in their sense of pleasure in what they were doing as teachers. Now, with Trois Chaises I needed to start again. I needed to let go of what I thought I knew, to let go of the structures that made my world make sense to allow some new sense to arise. Out of these revelations emerged that might not have emerged had I already known what I thought. My allowing their “ability to be” became possible through the deployment of wild imagination in which I let the work speak to me, rather than I speaking to and about the work. I am not arguing that my “new” understanding is better than my “old” understanding. Rather they are both “true” in incompatible ways that are, nevertheless, necessary to each other. Neither “sense” is truer than the other but, as with Viaticus Hooveraneous, something new arose when the context and setting within which “things” are ordinarily ensconced is shifted. In both “Hogan Dreams” and “Trois Chaises” dreaming is an important component of the work. I would go further: dreaming is an important component of my wild imagination. Trois Chaises, more so than “Hogan Dreams,” is grounded in dreaming our lives and what it means to dream and how we might recast ourselves and our students if we could help them dream beyond the pedestrian dreams of what this world offers and how they are to secure that offering. But it is not merely a dreaming of a better world that is grounded in the premises of this world. Rather it is dreaming of another world that cannot be separated from this world but does not simply duplicate the structure of this world.

88

4 Wild Imagination and the Critical Project

Curriculum, Control, and Creativity I have one more example to provide, a non-art example. My purpose is to show the play of wild imagination in a more conventional Curriculum Studies project. In the essay, “Curriculum, Control, and Creativity” (BlumenfeldJones 1995/2012a) I explored, in part, how words could be reimagined through a process of reading them out of context, seeking new potentials not available when taken at face value. This, too, is a species of wild imagination as I was not aware of what I would find and, in so doing, discover new understandings of particular curriculum issues. In this essay, I explored the value of control in dance curriculum as an issue to question. I focused my inquiry on a dance curriculum proposed by Margery Turner (1957) in her book, Modern Dance for High School and College. In that book, Turner elaborates a complete curriculum leading to a multiplicity of ends, including the development of a dancerly consciousness and body. As part of this development, she argues for the need to develop body conditioning as “indispensable to a sense of security” (Turner, p. 44). I proceeded to explore the word “security” as it seemed to go against my own understanding of the value of risk-taking in the art-making project. (Indeed, as I noted in the essay, Turner seems to value risk-taking in the artmaking project.) I explored the word “security” in reference to two possible meanings “’security as being at ‘home’ and security as being ‘protected against’” (p. 248). It is the second, “protected against” that is one location of a wild imagination approach to inquiry. One of the modes of desiring security, so I wrote, is “security” as “’protect against’ problems” (p. 250). That is, in dance, we want bodily security to guard against injuries. But what does it mean to guard against or protect from problems? I wrote of security as follows: If I purchase life insurance I am buying financial security against an uncertain future. I am preparing for disaster. This is an image of understanding life as a dangerous experience against which we need protection. Just so, if a hurricane is coming I will “secure” my home, tying everything down, shutting up the house tightly, protecting the windows, putting the house in a bound state to enable it to withstand the onslaught. If I go boating I will “secure” the boat to the dock, I will tie it up, protecting it from wandering with the waves. To “secure,” in these instances, is to prevent something from being hurt or from getting away. Is Turner’s language meaning, then, that the student should secure against disaster or hurt, or against some waywardness? I will suggest that the answer is “Yes.” The body is being secured by being bounded by skillful control and the curriculum is not just calling for security for mind (for fulfilling creative endeavors), but, also, against failure. The body as servant is to be watched and held in check and not to be trusted. (p. 250)

I noted, further on in the writing, that this insistence of security resonated with my own experience learning to dance. We were taught to distrust our bodies, to find fault with them and with ourselves, to see our bodies as potential disaster zones, as needing to be firmly tied down, for our bodies to serve our minds through firm control, reiterating the Cartesian mind/body dualism. This exploration of the word “security” gave me a clearer understanding of this, but I wasn’t aware, until I began to think

Examples of Wild Imagination in Curriculum Studies

89

outside the plain meaning of the word, what were the implications for thinking in this way. I was grappling with the difficulty of seeking artistic dance freedom within this firm tamping down of the body. Weren’t they at odds? No matter the answer to this question. The point is that these issues did not become clear to me prior to this exploration. I continued, in that essay, by exploring the idea of building good habits in one’s dance life and the development of the body as embodying good habits of movement. Turner urged that the dancer develops habits so that “’she uses them reflexly” (Turner, 1957, p. 45). I wrote of this word “habit” as three meanings: “as a doing of something without thinking about it (reflexly), as a nun’s habit, and as an addiction to something” (p. 254). I wrote that the first meaning seemed reasonable as you wanted to be able to dance the art without having to think everytime, about how to a turn or point a foot or flex a foot. But the other two “meanings” brought a different focus to the word “habit.” [H]abit as a “nun’s habit” images a shunning of the body … to gain spirituality … in part by applying austerities to her flesh, one of which is the wearing of clothing … [to] hide her body from herself and others… [Further], her habit differentiates her from the mundane, the profane … so that her attention may be placed on spirituality. The body is opposite to spirituality and strong boundaries must be set around the body in order to contain its wayward possibilities…. there is … a problem when habit … is invoked for creative dance…. if we are asked to forget it, there may be consequences for creativity. (p. 255)

I continued by discussing the way in which I was to make dance and my body priorities over any other dimensions of my life, to become the keeper of a flame that was, simultaneously, to be un-bodied (no sex before performing, no activities outside of dance that might imperil this fragile body, dance as always my first mistress, and so forth). As I wrote, “I learned to ignore large portions of my bodily and mental sensations in order to forward my devotion” to dance. Again, as with security, none of this was surprising, but I had never considered the implications of the austerities. This discovery of a meaning of “habit” not usually associated with dance, illuminated the deeper culture of dance that was hidden from view. The third meaning of “habit,” connected to addiction wedded me to a dance practice that could be, as with drugs and alcohol, a way of leaving the world, rather than living in it. I wrote, of these explorations of “habit,” that they restricted the dancer in ways that made her/him subservient to forces outside her/himself and to be willing to put her/himself in physical danger from those who ruled over her or him. All of this for the cause of art. We were never to “resist … or question” (p. 256). These explorations (of “security” and “habit”) came about through opening myself to walking through the fields of unexpected meanings, to be open to whatever emerged. These explorations opened me to new possibilities I had not been able to “see” when I was immersed in the standard ways of understanding. The explorations began as “inchoate” (I just wondered “what of these other meanings?”) that became “discernible” as I laid out the alternatives. The surprises that emerged were truly that, surprises. In this sense, these explorations are species of wild imagination. There were also politics here, as there is always in education settings, as relationships between teachers and learners and knowledge and skills are always negotiated as to

90

4 Wild Imagination and the Critical Project

who has the power to know and do what. “Politics at every second” is never truer than in this setting.

Wild Imagination and Curriculum Studies This last example provides, I hope, an understanding that wild imagination is not just something available to the artist/scholar in Curriculum Studies. We can act as naturalists (Blumenfeld-Jones), can act to have fun (Feynman), can play (Gadamer) with all kinds of objects and with no particular goal in mind. Wild imagination provides a ground for new possibilities in a mindset that is not consciously political. It provides processes that reveal resources of equal value in terms of revealing hidden implications of our curriculum practice. If we demand, as I think radical imagination does, that there are only certain ways of understanding the world and forming curriculum knowledge, so long will we miss the richness available to our field. In keeping with dialectical unlearning, our task is to continually undo what we think we know, to remain skeptical and ever ready for something beyond our expectations to walk across our field of vision (that lemur where he didn’t belong), and to follow that event wherever it might lead us, simply for the interest of seeing what will be revealed. Something of which we were not aware will be revealed and, in so happening, something of value will be brought into our world of Curriculum Studies. If only we are available to our own wild imagination.

References Blumenfeld-Jones, D. S. (1995/2012a). Curriculum, control and creativity in curriculum and the aesthetic life: Hermeneutics, body, democracy, and ethics. Journal of Curriculum Theory and Practice. Peter Lang. Blumenfeld-Jones, D. S. (1996). Cultural models, teacher thinking and curriculum reform. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 2(2), 209–231. Blumenfeld-Jones, D. S. (2004/2012b). Hogan dreams. In Curriculum and the aesthetic life: Hermeneutics, body, democracy, and ethics in curriculum theory and practice (pp. 341–368). Peter Lang. Blumenfeld-Jones, D. S. (2018). Wild imagination, radical imagination, politics, and the practice of arts-based educational research (ABER) and scholartistry. In M. Cahnmann-Taylor & R. Siegesmund (Eds.), Arts-based research in education. Routledge. Blumenfeld-Jones, D. S. (2016). The violence of words, words of violence: Keeping the uncomfortable at bay, a Jewish Perspective. In Is curriculum studies a protestant project?: A Jew and some protestants walked into a bar …. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing (Special Section, D. S. Blumenfeld-Jones, Ed.). Blumenfeld-Jones, D. S. (2021). Ethics, identity, and education. San Diego State University. Blumenfeld-Jones, D. S., & D. L. Carlson. (2017). Trois chaises, ABER, and the possibility of “thinking again”. International Journal of Education and the Arts, 18(27): 1–23. Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. (R. Nice, Trans.). Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press.

References

91

Buber, M. (1923/1958). I and Thou, 2nd ed. (Trans. Ronald Gregor Smith). NYC: Scribners. Buber, M. (1965). Elements of the interhuman. In M. Friedman (Ed.), The knowledge of man, selected essays (pp. 72–88). NYC: Harper Torchbooks. Doctorow, E. L. (2014). Doctorow ruminates on how a “Brain” becomes a mind. NPR interview. Weekend Edition Saturday. NYC: NPR. Feynman, R. (1999). How I won the Nobel Prize in all our futures: Creativity, culture and education, national advisory committee on creative and cultural education (pp. 30–31). Gadamer, H.-G. (2004). Truth and method (J. Weinsheimer & D. G. Marshall, Trans.). Continuum. Giroux, H. (2013). When schools become dead zones of the imagination: A critical pedagogy manifesto. www.Truth-Out.org. Johnson, M. (1994). Moral imagination: Implications of cognitive science for ethics. University of Chicago Press. Leary, L. (2013). Political violence, uneasy silence echo in Lahiri’s ‘Lowland’. Interview with Jhumpa Nahiri on NPR (interviewer: Lynn Neary). Leonardo, Z. (2004). Critical social theory and transformative knowledge: The function of criticism in quality education. Educational Research, 33(6), 11–18. Murray, P. (Ed.). (1991). Imagination: Study in the history of ideas. Routledge. Robinson, K. (2011). All our futures: Creativity, culture and education, report to the secretary of state for education and employment the secretary of state for culture, media, and sport, national advisory committee on creative and cultural education. Simon, S. (2014). Carving up hippos in ‘the sound of things falling’. Interview with Juan Gabriel Vasquez. NPR (interviewer: Scott Simon). https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/06/13/ 321565359/book-news-a-q-a-with-dublin-award-winner-juan-gabriel-v-squez Turner, M. (1957). Modern dance for high school and college. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Chapter 5

Freedom All Too Human

Abstract In this chapter, the idea of “freedom” unto itself is reimagined through analysis of the work of Maxine Greene and other Western-oriented theorists and then, contrasted with the work of Martin Buber as a counterpoint to the Westernoriented theorists. The Western perspective treats freedom as a possession. Freedom is, primarily, an individual right and state. It is theorized as one of, if not, the paramount value we hold. On the other side, Buber treats freedom as a process of relationship. We live within two relationships with the world: an I-It and an IThou relationship. Both are necessary to our lives, but the I-Thou relationship is the more fundamental. It is a relationship of being in communion with another human being, “experiencing the other side.” Buber terms this a dialogical relationship which is the ultimate fulfillment of our humanness. Freedom is, thus, fundamental but only as a ground for the most fundamental state. Underlying this chapter is the dialectical partnership: individuality/communion-with-others. Keywords Curriculum studies · Dialectics · Dialogue · Freedom · Liberty · I-Thou · I-It · Feminist ethics · Politics · Anarchism · Curriculum development · Maxine Greene · Martin Buber · Emmanuel Levinas [A Comment on Our Circumstances—This book exists in the context of the Covid19 pandemic. During this crisis, it has become clear that the politicization of this terrible event has thrown all of us, in the US, into an ethical quagmire with the words “freedom” and “liberty” taking a central role in the public discourse. The question of wearing face coverings, rather than being a matter of public health and caring for one another as a community with the common value of the preservation of life has become a political and physical battleground and an assault (in the minds of some) upon the basic freedoms of the US citizenry. On top of this, with the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin, the opportunity to begin to come together, as a whole community (not as segments of that community), around the dignity and sanctity of each life, no matter the life or the cause of losing that life (and, therefore, especially Black lives since they have been especially maltreated by our culture and our political systems, not to mention the lives of Brown peoples, Indigenous peoples, and immigrants from non-white countries whose lives have been made very difficult) has been in short supply. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 D. S. Blumenfeld-Jones, Reimagining Curriculum Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9877-4_5

93

94

5 Freedom All Too Human

None of these are small issues to be fixed by some adjustment to the curriculum. They go to the core of our nation and, indeed, our world. It is possible to consider our education system as particularly responsible for these failings and issues as well as the culture that has spawned them. We have failed to understand and teach toward the kind of understanding of freedom put forward by Martin Buber, to be explored in this chapter. We have failed to live the life of a dialectical interstice, joining the intertwined partners of individual and community. We seem to prefer living in camps that favor an emphasis on one group or the other. There is no easy “fix,” curricular or otherwise, to these dilemmas and this failing. No scholarly writing rides free of the moment in which it is written. It is necessary to acknowledge the context within which our work appears, otherwise the work becomes, simply, another abstraction untethered to the lives we are actually living.]

Freedom: The Heart of Curriculum Studies The argument I am about to present is focused on the US Curriculum Studies community with the understanding that I believe other communities share these ideas. In the US Declaration of Independence, we find this core sentence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men (sic) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

The order of these three rights is worth noting. First, there is the right to life which we can take to mean we must, first, have life to secure the other two rights. For, how could a person have liberty or pursue happiness without life? Second, there is the right to liberty. This right invokes freedom. We have the right to live the life which we have secured in the environment of liberty and freedom. Lastly, there is the pursuit of happiness. We are not guaranteed happiness but only guaranteed that we will be able to pursue it. The meaning of either liberty or happiness is not described. Each subsequent right is dependent on and of lesser importance than the previous right or rights. Thus, liberty or freedom is meaningless without life; pursuing happiness (self-satisfaction with life) depends on and is of lesser value or importance than is life or liberty/freedom. Additionally, within the context of the triumvirate, by dint of the separation within the sentence, liberty is neither the same as happiness nor has any direct relationship to happiness. In summary, one must have life to have liberty/freedom and liberty/freedom to pursue happiness. Why be concerned with the middle of these rights, liberty/freedom? In the opening note above I wrote that many, if not most, citizens of the US overvalue so-called freedom (or liberty). They also conflate happiness and freedom or liberty but invert the proper order of these two rights. The common logic is that if each of us is free, each of us can pursue satisfying ourselves and, so, each of us marks ourselves as free if we can personally satisfy and pursue happiness as the final and greatest of goods or values. In this logic, happiness precedes freedom as a value. Given the

Freedom: The Heart of Curriculum Studies

95

above reading of the Declaration of Independence, this conflation and inversion of freedom and happiness are errors that have led to the kinds of difficulties already mentioned. What has this to do with Curriculum Studies? First, of these three rights, curriculum has nothing to do with two of them. Curriculum cannot fulfill the right to life as this right is a matter of physical welfare. It may be important for the success of an education, but education cannot provide or protect life. So, too, with the right to pursue happiness. This is an individual exercising her/his right to such pursuit. Yes, education can be involved with this pursuit, but, ultimately, education is not about such self-satisfaction, except in the very narrow sense of being able to learn and study what you imagine will make you happy. Curriculum, writ large, is not really about the pursuit of happiness. Liberty and freedom are, however, central animating values that are of manifest concern with all curricular orientations. So, before providing an analysis of freedom, I will lay out the Curriculum Studies freedom terrain as I see it. No matter the curricular orientation, educating for and through freedom is one of the central values informing Curriculum Studies in the US context. (It may be the case that this valuing of freedom is a worldwide phenomenon and I hope that what I write here will be of some value for scholars from other contexts.) US Curriculum Studies scholars desire to help students value freedom and to learn to practice freedom through gaining knowledge and developing the ability to make well-considered decisions. What constitutes “freedom” may differ among curriculum orientations, but the desire for freedom of some sort is at the heart of the project. How is freedom at play in our work? Examining typical, curriculum orientations reveals its strong presence. There are, I assert, four fundamental curriculum orientations, based on the work of curriculum historian Herbert Kliebard (2004). These are: • a focus on students learning knowledge/subject matter as the central concern of curriculum theorizing and practice (knowledge sets us free) or • an individualist focus on a person learning to choose, for him or herself, life projects leading toward full self-realization (Maslow, 1962/1998; Rogers, 1994) or what Dewey termed “progress” by exploring the knowledge and activities of the mature world through beginning with what the world is to a child (Dewey, 1938/2002) (decision-making free from outside influence) or • a social reproduction focus in which a person is educated to fit into society as it exists and maximize his/her participation in that society; freedom is achieved by contributing to the good of that society and being educated accordingly (free within socially productive constraints not of our own making) or • a social reconstruction orientation focused on learners learning to determine what, in our society, gets in the way of true freedom and, through being educated in critical thought knowledge and processes, move our society toward greater freedom (making oneself and others free through politically critical thought and action based in Marx and Freire). Underlying all of this is the axiom that a good life is a free life. However, none of these foci reveal why we should care about freedom in the first place. I take the above to constitute self-evident truths on the part of Curriculum Studies scholars. In its self-evidence lies our dilemma. Do we know what “freedom” is?

96

5 Freedom All Too Human

Do we discuss it? There is little evidence, within the literature, of discussions of “freedom” as such. A brief review of Journal of Curriculum Theory, Journal of Curriculum Studies, and Curriculum Inquiry articles reveals that freedom, while frequently invoked as a desirable end (freedom to make curriculum choices, freedom as emancipation from oppressive situations, freedom for some particular purpose) is not engaged with as to its meaning. Freedom is a taken-for-granted invocation. In all cases, whatever freedom may be, it is always located either as a possession of the individual, or, if not yet possessed, that which we wish for her/him to possess. Without a discussion of what this “freedom” is, freedom remains only a flag waved over the curriculum, more a call to arms than an action or actions taken or to be taken. This reveals the problem with freedom: it is seriously undertheorized yet remains axiomatic to our practice. Freedom, as a stand-alone topic, does exist in the Curriculum Studies arena. Foremost in this regard is Maxine Greene’s work, The Dialectic of Freedom (1988), who insists on freedom as core to our work. However, even in her book, there is no exploration of the meaning of this obviously central term. In her introduction, she writes of freedom in the following ways: In . . . open contexts where persons attend to one another with interest, regard, and care, there is a place for the appearance of freedom, the achievement of freedom by people in search of themselves. (p. xi) [This book] seeks an audience of . . . those who educate with untapped possibility in mind, with the hope for the attainment of freedom in a difficult and resistant world. (p. xii) My hope is to remind people of what it means . . . to achieve freedom in dialogue with others for the sake of personal fulfillment and the emergence of democracy dedicated to life and decency. (p. xii) [T]he William F. Russel Chair I am fortunate to hold . . . was endowed for the sake of advancing inquiry into the connections between education and freedom . . .” (p. xii) [Distinguish] freedom from liberty . . . Liberty . . . conceived of in social and political terms . . . a domain where free choices can be made . . . freedom entails ‘the absence of obstacles’ . . . among the obstructions to be removed . . . poverty, sickness, even ignorance . . . many people do not act on their freedom . . . do not risk becoming different . . . attain[ing] autonomy. (pp. 117–118)

Freedom is something to “attain,” involves “searching” for oneself and, upon attaining freedom, we discover the “untapped possibility of mind” occurring “in a difficult and resistant world.” Her desire is to “achieve freedom in dialogue... for the sake of personal fulfillment and the emergence of democracy dedicated to life and decency.” Her work is to “inquire into the connections between education and freedom.” A person is free if s/he “risk[s] becoming different” and “attains autonomy.” What can we discern about Greene’s notion of freedom? Freedom is a thing with almost material existence, having to do with “untapped possibilities.” Freedom is achieved, in part, through dialogue, for the purposes of “personal fulfillment.” “Personal fulfillment” means that the individual is the location of freedom and the unit of analysis for freedom. Greene may care about others, care about “life and decency,” but this caring is located as a desire for each individual to live a fulfilled life. Such fulfillment is the purpose of freedom.

Freedom: The Heart of Curriculum Studies

97

In the Western tradition, achieving freedom is primarily, a political act. That is, when a person thinks of freedom in this tradition, it is a characteristic of a particular political society. Freedom outside of politics is not, for the most part, featured. Indeed, as you will see below, Greene’s main resources couch freedom within the context of political freedom. This is ironic since Greene does write that she distinguishes between freedom and liberty, placing only liberty within political considerations. But what freedom is remains opaque and is, primarily, in one way or another fundamentally political. At other times I would have strongly supported Greene’s foci, had I not encountered Martin Buber’s work in education. Buber wrote only two essays on education, perhaps the most central of which is, conveniently, titled “Education.” Buber not only invokes freedom, but he also limns its meaning. He invokes freedom as important to education and to human life (a common thread in Western thought) but he, then, throws open the idea that freedom is not a goal to be sought. It is the life of dialogue in light of the I-Thou relation (laid out in Buber’s seminal work, I and Thou, (1923/1958) that is the height of human seeking. Buber challenges us to rethink our ideas about freedom. And so, in this chapter I will present Buber’s thinking as a counterweight to Greene and conventional Western thought. Underlying this chapter is the dialectical partnership: individuality/communionwith-others. The former is a focus on individuality as hyper-individuality valuing a person’s primary focus on her/his own life. If a decision is to be made it is made in the interests of the individual. The latter is a focus on communion-with-others acknowledging the fact that we are inevitably connected to each other. In this instance, acknowledging that fundamental connection, we find our freedom from within our connections, not despite them. These contrasts provide two quite different bases for social life. The structure of this chapter is to first present some conventional understandings of freedom, summarized and discussed in the work of Maxine Greene. This is followed by a detailed presentation of some of Martin Buber’s seminal works on self-hood, education, and social life and a discussion of Emmanuel Levinas, especially on the ethical implications of a Buberian focus on freedom. Lastly, there is a discussion of implications for curriculum theory and practice.

Freedom as a Possession of the Individual There is a presumption in the West: freedom has to do with the individual and her/his prerogatives. Further, freedom is primarily socio-political in character. We can find both these foci (personal prerogatives and socio-political freedom) in the work of the eminent philosopher, Isaiah Berlin (2013) whose work influenced so many. Unlike Greene, he equated freedom with liberty (making freedom a political issue), positing two kinds of freedom: positive and negative freedom. Positive freedom exists when a person is “left to do or be what [a person] wants to do or be, without interference by other persons.” Negative freedom involves a situation in which other people are

98

5 Freedom All Too Human

“the source of control or interference that can determine someone to do, or be, one thing rather than another” as the interfered with person must struggle to do and be what it is s/he wishes to do or be. (p. 4) These two forms of freedom give rise to different ways of political governance. Some wish to go further than Berlin down the road of positive freedom. Neil Hopkins (2015), presenting the work of Philip Pettit as a corrective to Berlin, asserts that Pettit argued that much of the focus of political philosophy over the past few centuries has been on freedom as non-interference. For Pettit freedom [is] non-domination . . . ‘free persons [who] can walk tall, and look others in the eye. They do not depend on anyone’s grace or favour for being able to choose their mode of life’. (Hopkins, 2015, p. 608)

Pettit, more strongly than Berlin, favors positive freedom. Pettit seems to favor what might be termed “radical individualism” in which freedom depends on no one else than the person living the life of freedom. This perspective releases people from being connected to each other, making the individual even more profoundly, than in Berlin, the unit of analysis. Hopkins asserts that Pettit is not concerned with democratic or civic participation but, rather concerned with a person living her/his life outside of the social network. As such, freedom can be lived in many forms of social governance and does not predict any social organization. Rather, freedom is a necessary substrate for life, no matter the political context, that underlies all forms of social life. Maxine Greene includes politics in her own thinking, extolling the virtues, with Dewey, of democracy, but adding existentialism into her discussions of freedom. At the outset, she characterizes freedom as human freedom whose purpose is “to surpass the given and look at things as if they could be otherwise.” That is, freedom is freedom from past notions and seeing with new eyes. She cites Michel Foucault in this regard, making freedom a cognitive act: “Thought... is freedom in relation to what one does, the motion by which one detaches oneself from it, establishes it as an object, and reflects upon it as a problem.” (p. 2). Freedom means detaching yourself from your acts in order to problematize them. (This is similar to the idea of dialectical unlearning discussed in Chapter 3. Dialectical unlearning is freedom to problematize one’s thought as grounded in monocular ideologies that do not recognize the paradoxical character of thought leading to contradictions in one’s life, an inevitable realization in the light of dialectical unlearning.) Greene continues that “[t]hought... grows through language” and that “without thought or ‘freedom in relation to what one does’, there is little desire to... speak in one’s own voice” without which it is “unlikely to search for spaces where [people] can come together to establish a ‘sphere of freedom.’” (p. 3). For she and Foucault, freedom is, primarily, a cognitive logo-centric act lived within a sphere of freedom. This image demarcates a kind of geography with an inside-thesphere image where freedom resides and outside-the-sphere image where it does not reside. This, in turn, suggests that freedom is located only in some settings and not in others. With Buber we will find that the setting is not the location of freedom, that freedom can exist between people no matter where they are.

Freedom as a Possession of the Individual

99

Greene’s focus on thought echoes Dewey’s view of freedom (1938). Dewey wrote, “The only freedom that is of enduring importance is freedom of intelligence, that is to say, freedom of observation and of judgment exercised in behalf of purposes that are intrinsically worth while.” (p. 61) Dewey went further, however, asserting that [t]he commonest mistake made about freedom is . . . to identify it with freedom of movement, or with the external or physical side of activity. . . . this external and physical side of activity cannot be separated from the internal side of activity; from freedom of thought, desire, and purpose. . . . But the fact still remains that an increased measure of freedom of outer movement is a means, not an end. (p. 61)

In writing that the “physical side of activity cannot be separated from the internal side of activity” he appears to value the body in thinking and purposing. However, he still makes the mind (logo-centricity) paramount. He asserts that seeking “freedom from restriction” (of physical activity) misunderstands that such freedom is only a “means not an end,” substituting the means for the end. This “end in itself... tends to [destroy]... shared cooperative activities” which, for Dewey is another sort of negative. (p. 63) (For Dewey [1916] shared cooperative activities are consonant with his definition of democracy as “associated living.” This idea will be echoed in Martin Buber’s work who asserts freedom is communion, discussed below.) From the above Dewey appears to understand freedom as an amalgam of freedom from physical restriction (a bodily state of freedom) and freedom for purposing (a mental state of freedom). However, he writes that “freedom... is power.” What kind of power: “power to frame purposes, to judge wisely, to evaluate desires by the consequences which will result from acting upon them; power to select and order means to carry chosen ends into operation.” (p. 64) (See Chapter 4, “Wild Imagination and the Critical Project,” for an elaboration on the meaning of power that counters Dewey’s ideas.) In this assertion, Dewey is favoring a freedom of consciousness (of which this present book is an exploration of consciousness, as noted in the Introduction). In this way, while he begins to make space for freedom as an embodied state, he withdraws from that in favor of the cognitive, as does Greene and Foucault. As one of the pervasive themes of this book is the value of bodily knowing, Dewey’s thinking continues a kind of low-level assault upon the body (and, as will be argued in Chapter 9, “Reimagining Time,” therefore an assault on the feminine dimension of consciousness in the form of jouissance and the “monumental”). Greene turns to Christopher Lasch for other insights into freedom. Lasch saw people as living lives of “minimal selves,” finding themselves “overwhelmed by external circumstances, victimized and powerless.” (p. 3) Within such a context, “young and old alike find it hard to shape authentic expressions of hopes and ideals... people feel as if they are rootless subjectivities.” (p. 3) For Lasch freedom is a psychological phenomenon, fighting against the individual being a victim and feeling powerless. Freedom is a state of personal authenticity of thought and action. Freedom is an internal affair and remains, in Greene’s discourse, as a cognitive state. In sum, what we have so far is freedom as all mind. Thinking of freedom as human freedom, out of Foucault and Lasch, we have human freedom as “the capacity to surpass the given and look at things as if they could

100

5 Freedom All Too Human

be otherwise.” (Greene, p. 3) Freedom is about surpassing what you know, freedom “from” illusions, “freedom to” think outside conventions. Freedom is becoming someone other than who we were, transcending selves over and over. Freedom offers “the power to act to attain one’s purposes” through “critical understanding.” (p. 4) With Stuart Hampshire, Greene sees human freedom as “the ‘power of reflection and with the self-modifying power of thought.’” (p. 4) Again we see freedom as primarily a cognitive act based on the use of critical reason to discern the personal truths that are the expression of freedom. And, in all of this, the site of freedom remains the individual. Greene’s existentialism continues this theme of the individual. From Jean-Paul Sartre she notes that “the project of acting on our freedom involves a rejection of the insufficient or the unendurable... an imaging of a better state of things... a surpassing of a constraining or deficient “reality”... mov[ing]... toward “a field of possibilities,” what is possible or realizable.” (p. 5) Here freedom appears to not be dependent on reason but on the making of images that hold out hope of a better situation, suggesting a relationship to imagination. Also, Sartre takes an emotional approach. Freedom involves “an ‘anguish’ linked to action on one’s freedom, an anguish due to the recognition of one’s own responsibility for what is happening.” (p. 5) As we take responsibility for our freedom, we experience the anguish of having to make a decision of whose outcome we cannot be sure. Yet freedom to experience this anguish is, for Sartre, a true hallmark of freedom. As Sartre famously asserted, with no plans outside of the ones we must make for ourselves, we are “doomed to choose.” In the above, certain features are notable. All the thinkers cited so far focus on the lone individual act of thinking as central to freedom. Foucault, in the earlier citations, uses the pronoun “one,” echoing this focus on the individual. Dewey focuses on the individual creating the plans out of which freedom will be formed, even when that plan creation is within the context of what Dewey termed “associated living” with others (his vision of democracy). Lasch sees individuals as being overwhelmed. Berlin and Hampshire turn to a more explicitly political form of freedom as freedom is freedom from despots. Sartre finds a fundamental isolation from everyone. With Foucault there is also the act of detaching her or himself from the object of inquiry in order to exert her/his freedom to think, to establish and to reflect. (See Chapter 3, “Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom” for more on the value of detaching from one’s professed positions as a mode of self-critique.) This detachment emphasizes the lone individual. Greene expresses some concerns about this isolation and, for thinkers such as Sartre, darkness. She cites Charles Taylor as seeing “a danger of nihilism... associated with a view of freedom as pure autonomy or self-dependence.” (p. 7) Taylor sought a “‘situated freedom’... ‘grounded in the acceptance of our defining situation [in which] [t]he struggle to be free... is powered by an affirmation of this defining situation as ours’.” (p. 7) Greene notes that “we, and our situations are both natural and social.” (In this there are possibilities of connection with another person and with our common life which, as we shall later see with Buber, is central to understanding freedom.)

Freedom as a Possession of the Individual

101

While Greene seems primarily concerned with the individual, she recognizes that freedom is also an issue of groups of people suffering, calling for political solutions to achieve freedom. She writes: freedom achieved can only involve a partial surpassing of determinateness: the limits, internal and external, experienced by restless, preoccupied, rebellious women; the neglect and indifference suffered by the outsider or the immigrant; the discrimination and inequitable circumstances faced by the minority group member; the artificial barriers erected in the way of children trying to create authentic selves . . . All have to be perceived as obstacles, most often obstacles erected by other human beings . . . if freedom is to be achieved. These obstacles or blocks or impediments are . . . artifacts, human creations, or ‘natural’ or objectively existent necessities. (p. 9)

In the politics of freedom, our task is to clear away “the obstacles erected by other human beings.” Here freedom is portrayed grimly as a struggle against limitations. Freedom is something desirable won at great cost. Near the end of her book, Greene presents a feminist view of freedom which partially departs from the focus on the individual and turns to the idea of connection and relation. She notes that the two major development theorists (Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg) focus on achieving fully autonomous individuality as the pinnacle of cognitive (Piaget, 1968) and moral (Kohlberg, 1981) development. In contrast, the work of Carol Gilligan (1993, a former colleague of Kohlberg’s) and Mary Field Belenky et. al (1986), emphasize that women’s path to development is through the cultivation and maintenance of relationships with others, rather than a focus on individuated, isolated development. Nel Noddings’ (1984) work stands out in this wise, as she developed the notion of “care” in education in which there is the caregiver and the one-who-is-cared-for and they stand in mutual relationship to each other. The caregiver gives care without concern for repayment and by setting aside her/his self-interests; the one-who-is-cared-for must acknowledge that care has been given in order for the relationship to be complete. Without both dispositions, the care relationship is broken. However, both individuals in this caring relationship remain autonomous actors within the duality of the relationship. It is, it seems, more an intellectual relationship with tinges of emotion. When Greene, within her discussion of feminism, turns to freedom, she notes that freedom receives little, if any, attention in the work of feminists. So, her work here is more extrapolation than affirmative declaration. In summation, Greene’s, Berlin’s, Petit’s, Foucault’s, Dewey’s, Lasch’s, and, even, Noddings’ view of freedom is grounded in the fundamental value of dominant Western culture: a focus on the individual living her/his life in such a way as to make personal choices the central feature of her/his freedom. This form of freedom points to the outset of this chapter where I asserted that we, in the US, over emphasize freedom as the liberty to do whatever we want. Sometimes we may modify what we want and/or modify our actions to achieve it. But the focus remains on the individual exercising independent thought, choice, and action. There is one other education tradition worth some exploration: anarchism. Anarchists traditionally value the freedom of the individual, insisting that society be a congregation of such individuals whose main objective is to allow the individual to

102

5 Freedom All Too Human

live her/his life as s/he sees fit. However, classical anarchists, such as Herbert Read (1947), recognize that no society can succeed if people only pursue their personal interests. There is socially necessary work and people must come together for the purposes of fulfilling such work, by working together temporarily for the purpose of fulfilling socially necessary projects. Such anarchists are anti-institutionalists believing that no organization of people for socially necessary work should outlive the life of that work. Project accomplished? Structure for that work is disbanded. If there is ongoing work that never changes, ways must be found for seeing that everyone contributes to the project, no exceptions, except reasonable exceptions. There is no elitism in such a society. Each person contributes what she or he is capable of contributing and no social work is performed at the cost of individuals not getting to pursue their individual interests and projects. (See Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Dispossessed, 2014, for a fictionalized and powerful rendering of anarchism.) What does anarchism mean for education? Max Stirner (in Mueller, 2012) wrote as follows: Let the universal culture of schooling aim at an apprenticeship in freedom, and not in submissiveness . . . The motif, the thrust of the new age is the freedom of the will. Consequently, pedagogy ought to espouse the molding of the free personality as its starting point and objective . . . That culture, which is genuinely universal in that the humblest rub shoulders with the haughtiest, represents the true equality of all: the equality of free persons. For only freedom is equality.

Freedom is contrasted, here, with submissiveness. The individual should be educated to live a life of “freedom of the will.” Under this form of non-elitist freedom (“the humblest rub shoulders with the haughtiest”), freedom means “equality.” Anarchism is a bridge to Buber. The conventional Western views of freedom treat freedom as a value they hold in high esteem. For this conventional view, one chooses to be free: it is a value one could choose or not choose. Anarchists differ from this view with freedom as a fundamental value (not a value among other values) and freedom determining the quality of a society and of living. For anarchists a person only lives a good life if that good life is constantly informed by freedom. Buber, on the other hand, treats freedom as a fundamental character of humanity, whether we value it or not. It is an existential truth that is part of who we are, not a value chosen from among other values. Another way to distinguish Buber from the conventional Western view and anarchism is found in how these views understand what freedom is. For both the Western conventional view and anarchists, freedom is an item, an object, and thing one has or does not have. This makes for an intellectual approach to freedom since one chooses with one’s mind to be free or not be free. Buber’s approach is not intellectual but describes the fabric of our lives. Western conventional thought and anarchists prescribe how we should live. Buber describes how we do live: prescription versus description. This distinction makes all the difference in how we understand freedom. And, so, I now turn to Buber to understand freedom in the light of the basic character of our lives.

Freedom As Dialogue

103

Freedom As Dialogue Buber has a very different view of freedom. While he does not deny that freedom can be political (what he terms “social”), freedom is also found in dialogical relationships grounded in what he terms the “interhuman,” an existential mutuality that is not social, not political. He lays out his vision of freedom in two essays “Education” (1947/2002), an essay drawn on a keynote speech he delivered to a conference on creativity in 1925 and “Elements of the Interhuman” (1965), an exploration of the life of dialogue. Both these essays are grounded in Buber’s seminal book, I and Thou (1923/1958). In the previous section, freedom is directly connected to political life and world and is a kind of “thing” possessed (or not) by an individual. The purpose of freedom is to afford a person the scope to realize her/his own desires and potentials. Only when one is free to pursue her or his own ends is one living a properly realized existence. The securing and deployment of freedom is the central concern. For Buber freedom is not a possession but a relationship and its purpose is to serve the life of dialogue, the penultimate human realization. As we shall see, this life of dialogue is a body/mind consciousness as the site of freedom and has to do with our connection with others. It is not a negating of the body in favor of the mind (Dewey’s favoring of intelligent purposing) but consciousness (see Introduction, Chapters 3, 8, and 9, for more ways of thinking about consciousness) in the life of dialogue as a physical, non-verbal state of purposing that is known (mind) in the body, mind and body being simultaneously experienced. To understand Buber’s vision of freedom we must first understand what Buber means by dialogue and the ways in which we live that thwart dialogue, for freedom is not a goal but a means to the goal of the life of dialogue. To understand dialogue we must, first understand the persons who engage in dialogue and each person’s relationship to the world in which s/he lives. Buber develops these understandings in I and Thou.

Primary Relationships to the World: I-It and I-Thou What does it mean to be a human being? Buber opens I and Thou (1923/1958) with the assertion that a human being is a being in relationship (not a being isolated). This relationship to the world is actually two relationships, what he terms I-It and I-Thou. To Man [sic] the world is twofold, in accordance with his twofold attitude. . . . in accordance with the twofold nature of the primary words which he speaks. The primary words are not isolated words, but combined words. The one primary word is the combination I-Thou. The other primary word is the combination I-It; wherein, without a change in the primary word, one of the words He and She can replace It. Hence the I of man is also twofold. For the I of the primary word I-Thou is a different I from that of the primary word I-It. Primary words do not signify things, but they intimate relations. Primary words do not describe something that

104

5 Freedom All Too Human

might exist independently of them, but being spoken bring about existence. Primary words are spoken from the being. (p. 3)

Here we find notable characteristics of what it means to be human. • First, we form the world through our attitudes. Typically, the world around us is considered as separate from us and we respond to that world, forming our attitudes toward it. Buber reverses this origin story, declaring that a person’s attitude forms the world. The primary words (I-It and I-Thou) “do not describe something that might exist independently of them but being spoken bring about existence.” That is, we bring the world into existence by how we interact with it. While this may appear to fly in the face of Luckmann’s and Berger’s social construction of reality (discussed in Chapter 3), they are not actually at odds. When we negotiate with the world through these two primary words, the world pushes back and offers its own version of reality as brought to us in our learning relationship with other people. Thus, our being is an amalgam of these primary words and the socially constructed world in which they are deployed. • Second, there are actually two attitudes (aphorized in the two partners primary words, It and Thou) which yield different world understandings and experiences. • Third, these two attitudes are qualitatively different, found in the assertion that the I in I-Thou is a different I from the I in I-It. Thus, two different “I”s exist. We may think we are only one being, but Buber is telling us we are actually two beings that are qualitatively different from each other. To understand freedom, we will have to understand the difference between these two primary words.

I-It In the I-It relation, each of us lives in the world through our senses. “I perceive something. I am sensible of something. I imagine something. I will something. I feel something. I think something.” (p. 4) Buber’s notion of senses includes but also transcends the usual five senses, including feelings, thoughts, and imaginings. The life of this expanded notion of senses establishes “the realm of It.” (p. 4) In this “realm” I act on the world and use the world. I make the world into a set of “things” (people, animals, plants, earth, machines, everything) I use to procure my own sense of being as a being who acts upon the world and makes things happen. Even another person can become an It, a thing. But with this making of the world into a set of things, “there is [always] another thing. Every It is bounded by others; It exists only through being bounded by others.” (p. 4) As I make entities into things I can use, other things appear (“bounded by others”) which give definition to what I am bounding with my words. I use the intersection of things as definitions of those things. Further, I bound what I find within definitions I give to what I find. These definitions include an understanding of how they function. Through understanding their functions, I use them to forward my own projects. The world of things is not

Freedom As Dialogue

105

static. It multiplies constantly, as I find one thing leading to another thing. In this multiplication, it is possible to always find more “things.” In all this, the focus in I-It is entirely on a self making both itself and a world. Since I am using the world for my own purposes, I do not know things of the world as they are to themselves. I only know them for what they are for me. As Buber puts it, I “travel over the surface of things and experience them. [I] extract knowledge about their constitution from them; [I] win an experience from them.” (p. 5) By “travel[ing] over the surface of things” I never know their depth or know that which escapes my own definition of who and what they are. Thus, I only know their “surfaces.” Even when asserting that I have had an “inner” experience, distinguishing it from an “outer” experience, this does not change the situation. It is still an experience having to do with myself, rather than anything to do outside my self-interests. In this relationship, I am fundamentally divided from everything around me. Conversely, the world which is experienced “has no part in the experience.” (p. 5) That is, I may use some experience of the world to accomplish something for myself, but this use is not part of that which is used. I see that “thing” only for what is useful to me. The rest is of no importance. The thing being experienced “has no concern in the matter. For it does nothing to the experience, and the experience does nothing to it.” (p. 5) That is, the thing remains whole unto itself even if that wholeness is not available to the I in the I-It relationship. This is a natural state of affairs, not to be decried and quite necessary for survival. It is how we live most of the time. Buber declares, however, that “[t]he life of human beings does not consist of all this and the like alone.” (p. 4).

I-Thou Buber declares that the “realm” of the I-Thou is known when “the speaker has no thing for his object.” That is, the thing of the I-It world is no longer an object or thing that is of use. Now it becomes an unbounded being. As Buber puts it, “when Thou is spoken, there is no thing. Thou has no bounds. When Thou is spoken, the speaker has no thing, [s/he] has indeed nothing. But [s/he] takes [her/his] stand in relation.” (p. 4) “Takes [her/his] stand in relation” means the other is not reduced to something known in the usual way, through definitions, but exceeds all definition. For Buber, this is “the world of relation.” (p. 6) Living in the I-Thou relation is not a matter of being influenced or not influenced (as if being controlled by another) but is a matter of letting go of all desire to control. It is a presence to the other for the other and through the other. For Buber, this constitutes the state in which freedom will be discovered. In Buber’s essay, “Education” freedom is featured as the bridge to an I-Thou relation.

106

5 Freedom All Too Human

Freedom and Education I have indicated that Buber’s essay “Education” was a keynote to a conference on creativity. At the outset, Buber suggested that the topic of creativity was incorrect. He averred that only G-d could create (make something from nothing). Human beings had what he termed an “originative instinct” whereby they would make things in the world that might not have existed before, but that origination depended on what was already available in the world. Educating for the originative instinct, involves a “release of powers” (p. 107) which “can be only a presupposition of education, nothing more... it is the nature of freedom to provide the place, but not the foundation as well, on which true life is raised.” Here, immediately, we see that freedom is not the goal. “True life” is the goal. We will find, eventually that “true life” is the life of dialogue that is only achieved through experiencing an I-Thou relationship. Freedom is important (it “provide[s] the place” for true life to occur) but freedom isn’t the foundation for such a life. The freedoms and releases of powers found in the various curriculum orientations (knowledge, personhood, social accommodation, social reconstruction) do not provide the true life of dialogue of which Buber writes. Further, “[T]he release of powers should not be any more than a presupposition of education. In the end it is not the originative instinct alone which is meant by the ‘creative powers’ that are to be ‘developed.’” (p. 104) We will find that the ultimate purpose of education is encountering each other in such a way as to have that other no longer be an “It” in our lives. In the previous discussion of freedom as a possession, freedom is just one kind of freedom even if it is applied in several ways (freedom to, freedom from, freedom for, freedom of, and so forth). For Buber there are two freedoms, a lower freedom and a higher freedom. Buber writes of lower freedom as “outer freedom (which consists in not being hindered or limited).” (This is redolent of Isaiah Berlin’s “negative freedom.”) This lower freedom is “the freedom of development.” (p. 107). It “signifies our capacity for growth but by no means our growth itself. This latter freedom is charged with importance as the actuality from which the work of education begins, but as its fundamental task it becomes absurd.” (p. 107) Maxine Greene, as an important Deweyan scholar, would recognize the word “development” as central to the education project and, thus, core to freedom (the freedom to develop oneself). Indeed, Dewey, in his most seminal works, makes development the central purpose of education. But Buber characterizes making “development” as a goal “absurd.” Development is only growth of one’s potential, a growth fixated on the individual and her/his capacities. Such a focus locates development in the I-It primary word, thus it is not the ultimate realization of human life. What of a “higher freedom”? “Higher freedom” is “the soul’s freedom of decision [which] signifies perhaps our highest moments” (p. 107). Buber characterizes these “highest moments” as “’moral’ freedom.” This “higher freedom” may signify “our highest moments but [it is] not a fraction of our substance.” What does Buber mean by “not a fraction of our substance”? Even this freedom does not touch the essence

Freedom As Dialogue

107

of who we are which is that life of dialogue, of the I-Thou relationship and therefore, is not fundamental to our being, no matter how fine and even important it might be. What then, is freedom? It is here that Buber reveals a distinctive understanding of freedom from all we have encountered so far. There is a tendency to understand this freedom [the freedom of growth], which may be termed evolutionary freedom, as at the opposite pole from compulsion, from being under a compulsion. But at the opposite pole from compulsion there stands not freedom but communion. Compulsion is a negative reality; communion is the positive reality; freedom is a possibility, possibility regained. (pp. 107–108)

Most understandings of freedom (see Berlin for instance) start with the notion that we are being forced to do something, that we are hindered from doing what we want, and freedom is freedom from such compulsion. Pettit thinks freedom exists when we are always unhindered and that is our ground state. In both cases, freedom is license: doing whatever one likes without hindrance. Buber is asserting, however, that this is in error. Freedom is not freedom from compulsion but, rather for communion. Communion: from the Latin—with [com] union. United. Together. Across boundaries. Something other than our aloneness (David Riesman’s, et. al The Lonely Crowd, 1963, and Colin Wilson’s, 1956, The Outsider come to mind). Communion with what? At the opposite pole of being compelled by destiny or nature or men there does not stand being free of destiny or nature or men but to commune and to covenant with them. To do this, it is true that one must first have become independent; but this independence is a foot-bridge not a dwelling place. (p. 108)

“[T]his independence is a foot-bridge not a dwelling place.” This is what we have done in the West: made independence of freedom a dwelling place toward which we strive. For Buber it is the footbridge toward someplace else. That someplace else is to commune and covenant with destiny, nature, and men. To commune and covenant with destiny means to recognize that we were not born into the world de novo, but we were born into a community that carries with it, its history, its people, its customs, a life lived. We stand on that destiny as a beginning place although not our final place. We never leave it behind even as we move into new vistas. Curricularly we can do this by bringing our students and ourselves in contact with the multitude of influences within a domain and admitting that each of them is a legitimate contributor to the history of that domain. I did this for myself, in dance, by educating myself through books, articles, and classes dealing with the history of modern dance and, especially, connecting through such study with influential makers of modern dance choreography and technique. In this way I was able to begin to understand the multifarious visions of this field, not just fixated on my own corner of the field which I also explored both through reading and, of course, years of classes and choreography with my major artistic influence, Phyllis Lamhut. To commune and covenant with nature is to commune and covenant with the physical, biological world around us and in us and recognize that we cannot do anything we want (free from compulsion) but must understand the ways in which our lives are dependent on the world around us. Curricularly this means emphasizing how nature,

108

5 Freedom All Too Human

in all its forms, effects what we know and do as well as what we do to nature (the more typical view of doing science). To commune and covenant with men (and this may be the most profound communion and covenant of all) means to recognize, that, as Buber might have it, we do not have a world except we have a world together. Curricularly, this means emphasizing our communal life in both the content of our curriculum and the ways in which we organize classroom life. It does not mean “cooperative learning” so much as emphasizing how much we learn from each other as well as on our own. It means studying the doings of human beings as both the acts of individuals acting in the world but also the ways those acts are always dependent on others as well. These are the starting places for freedom and freedom depends on them although one must not stay mired in destiny, nature, or men as constraints that cannot be surpassed. Buber writes also of compulsion in the context of communion: Compulsion in education means disunion, it means humiliation and rebelliousness. Communion in education is just communion, it means being opened up and drawn in. Freedom in education is the possibility of communion; it cannot be dispensed with and it cannot be made use of in itself; without it nothing succeeds, but neither does anything succeed by means of it; it is the run before the jump, the tuning of the violin, the confirmation of that primal and mighty potentiality which it cannot even begin to actualize. (p. 108)

Notice that “freedom in education is the possibility of communion.” In communion we are “drawn in” (as opposed to the Latin for education, educare, which means “drawn out”). There are no guarantees in communion. But it is, also, only the beginning: “it is the run before the jump, the tuning of the violin... potentiality which it cannot even begin to actualize.” Communion with destiny, nature, and men is the “run before the jump, ‘the tuning of the violin.” I may want to play music, but first I must tune the violin. Then I begin to engage with the music itself, but I cannot do so without this communion. This, however, may seem almost hopeless as it is a potential ‘which... cannot even begin to actualize.” What, then, are we to do? What is the point of all this potentiality? What is “true freedom?”. It is the freedom of dialogue, of the moment of the I-Thou which is at the center of human life. In the end, the true vocation of education is the realization of this possibility, a possibility which cannot be engineered nor made to happen but, nevertheless, for which we must be prepared. Buber writes: “[T]he real process of education begins and... is based [on what] I call experiencing the other side. (p. 114) Buber provides two descriptions of “experiencing the other side.” A man belabours another, who remains quite still. Then let us assume that the striker suddenly receives in his soul the blow which he strikes: the same blow, that he receives it as the other who remains still. For the space of a moment, he experiences the situation from the other side. Reality imposes itself on him. What will he do? Either he will overwhelm the voice of the soul, or his impulse will be reversed. A man caresses a woman, who lets herself be caressed. Then let us assume that he feels the contact from two sides – with the palm of his hand still, and also with the woman’s skin. The twofold nature of the gesture, as one that takes place between two persons, thrills through the depth of enjoyment in his heart and stirs it. If he does not deafen his heart he will have – not to renounce the enjoyment but – to love. (p. 114)

Freedom As Dialogue

109

“Experience the other side.” This is the I-Thou moment. It is fleeting and, notice, it does not involve words. Buber tells us that the man who belabours the other man “from then on [does not] have this two-sided sensation in every such meeting.” But “the one extreme experience makes the other person present for him for all time.” (p. 114) The man who experiences the woman from the other side experiences love that is more than enjoyment. It is the woman as Thou. To be sure, we do not live constantly within such I-Thou moments; we cannot do so; the I-It life is also important and comprises our everydayness. But now, it is transformed, forever. Buber goes further. He tells us, It would be wrong to identify [this] . . . with . . . ‘empathy.’ Empathy means . . . to glide one’s own feeling into the dynamic structure of an object [of any kind made from anything, including another person] . . . it means to ‘transpose’ oneself . . . [to] the exclusion of one’s own concreteness . . . the absorption in pure aestheticism of the reality. (pp. 114–115)

By “pure aestheticism” Buber means a total self-absorption which does not permit a person to notice another as s/he is fully absorbed only in her/his own experiences. On the other hand, empathy is also a problem since, if a person loses her/himself in another (transposes into another person) then that person is unable to feel “the other side.” Instead of empathy, Buber invokes “inclusion.” Inclusion . . . is the extension of one’s own concreteness, the fulfilment of the actual situation of life, the complete presence of the reality in which one participates. Its elements are, first, a relation, of no matter what kind, between two persons, second, an event experienced by them in common, in which at least one of them actively participates, and, third, the fact that this one person, without forfeiting anything of the felt reality of his activity, at the same time lives through the common event from the standpoint of the other. A relation between persons that is characterized in more or less degree by the element of inclusion may be termed a dialogical relation. (p. 115)

And there it is the life of dialogue. Inclusion involves a person extending her/his own concreteness past the singularity of her/his experience. The person becomes completely present to another’s reality. At the same time, and this is the dialectical character of dialogue, the person retains her/his own reality and activity while “at the same time [living] through the common event from the standpoint of the other.” S/he experiences both the other and her/himself simultaneously. The life of dialogue is the life of freedom, but it is not a freedom from anything but freedom into a true connection with another in which you do not lose yourself but are fully present in yourself but in the other as well. The two cannot be teased apart and, yet you never lose your understanding that you are you. The lover who touches both experiences from the other side and retains her/his knowing the s/he is still her/him. It is the dialectic of the I-Thou as two separatenesses that are not separate just as there is the dialectic of the I-Thou and the I-It which cannot be separated from each other and yet sense each other. Both present a full world, but the world is not full without both being present. What have we come to so far? We have come to freedom not as most Western thought would have it, a lone person acting in the world to achieve personal autonomy through cultivating uniqueness. For Buber, freedom is connection (not autonomy).

110

5 Freedom All Too Human

Celebrating difference tends to isolate us from each other. These two forms of freedom appear to conflict with each other. We could take their conflict as a mere choice we can make between the two forms of freedom, choosing one over the other. But given the opening of this chapter, referencing the US penchant for equating freedom with the lone individual pursuing her/his own self-interest, a penchant even Greene rejects, this becomes not merely a neutral choice to be made. It involves a profound choice. Teaching for connection is a response to this over-determined liberty value. Imagine a curriculum teaching toward both kinds of freedom. The program cultivating autonomy and celebration of difference seems a fairly straightforward program, one that has been practiced repeatedly in the famous free-school movement, the Summerhill style of education, and so forth. But what of a Buberian vision of freedom, how shall we pursue such an education? It is to that we must now turn as its vision of education is not so clear-cut. For Buber, freedom is the grounds for connection, communion, and the I-Thou moment. To conceive curricularly of education for connection, we must better understand this I-Thou moment. Buber provides some understanding of this in his essay “The Interpersonal.” While this essay does not mention education per se, it presents an image of living that can lead us to recognize the problems with our present ways of thinking about curriculum as well as suggesting how education can be informed by the kind of freedom Buber is describing.

Freedom in Dialogue In Buber’s essay “The Interhuman” (1965), he provides a set of dialectical distinctions which can provide the outlines for a curriculum practice grounded in freedom and dialogue: • “social”/“personal,” • “seeming”-“objectification”/“interpersonal,” • “speechifying”-“seeming”/“dialogue.” These dialectical distinctions can limn a possible curriculum practice in which we not only plan for curricula that can teach toward the life of dialogue, but we can think about the practice of curriculum thinking, informing it by the life of dialogue and the interpersonal. Buber begins by contrasting the “personal” (which he will transform into the “interpersonal”) with the “social.” What is the “social”? The “social” is a world in which, while I live with others socially, I do not see these others beyond their status as just another element in my world. The “social” focuses on our common life in which “each individual existence is enclosed and contained in a group existence.” (p. 72) That is, individual identities are subsumed to the group identity, taking on the shared characteristics of the group. To be a member of a group we are inclined to “suppress personal relation in favour of the purely collective element.” (p. 73). If the “social”

Freedom As Dialogue

111

focuses on that which makes people members of groups, stripping away what might make them not good fits for the group, then “the personal” is that which is specific to a specific person. To have the “social” we must suppress the “personal” in favor of the social as the collective’s interests take precedence over the individual. In the “social” “the life between person and person seems to retreat more and more before the advance of the collective. The collective aims at holding in check the inclination to personal life.” (p. 73). There is a tension in the “social.” In social life, we are attempting to balance what is “good” for the group over against what is “good” for the individual. Joining together in a group is done more in the spirit of the practical. In this description of the “social” we find an immediate danger: joining together in this way runs the risk that the tyranny of the group will overwhelm the individual qua individual. Greene echoes this problem when she cites groups (women, people of color, immigrants) who must band together for political purposes. She notes that they sacrifice their individual personhood to accomplish the political ends of just opportunities and becoming equal members of the nation group. In these circumstances the individual, who is at the heart of the conventional freedom theorists’ ideas of freedom, disappears. The group, the “social,” occludes her/his existence. The “social” becomes a necessary evil. Various visions of social freedom, found in Greene’s synopsis of the freedom literature as well as other work cited, remain ensconced in the I-It relation as each person is, temporarily, a “thing” that the group needs. While political actors may work to ground their coming together in emotion and empathy for the other, grounded in caring for the welfare of the other, emotion, empathy, and caring are still focused on the needs of the group and the group’s attributes which take precedence over the individual (and, consequently over the personal). Each individual is seen, from the perspective of the group, as a “thing” with specific attributes that make membership in the group possible. The work done together on the social is work done by individuals agreeing to do such work. At the same time, what is specific about each person is made invisible. This is the nature of politics. I assert that Curriculum Studies in general is fixated on the “social” over “the personal.” That is, except for the personcentered orientation, learners in the other orientations are viewed as needing to learn how to participate in society and its needs over against their individual lives. This is not to say that there is no human warmth between members of society (Buber avers there is) as reflected in how classrooms are curricularly organized. There are, in many cases, attempts made to create hospitable spaces for learning. Care is taken to make the curricular material accessible. But we must not mistake this for true dialogue. At the same time, we must not dismiss “the social.” Buber, himself, while he may analyze society in this way, is not asserting that the “social” is wrong. It is a necessary dimension of political life. But it is not the only dimension of total life. The other dimension, one grounded in the I-Thou relation, is what Buber terms the “interhuman.” What is the “interhuman?” Buber describes it as talking “between human beings.” He means by this not merely talking together which does occur in the “social” for purposes of the “social” but, rather, a kind of joint being in which each interlocutor

112

5 Freedom All Too Human

is neither fully one person nor the other person. Individuality disappears in the interhuman as the talking becomes the dissolution of boundaries and an openness to the other without the need for the other to be useful in any way. It is a presence to the other with no recompense requested. This immersion in each other may seem strange as the interhuman relation both dissolves boundaries and, simultaneously, retains individuality. This is the dialectical state of dialogue. Buber is concerned that you may see this as a one-way emotional state in which you feel sympathy for the other person. However: The interhuman goes well beyond that of sympathy. The only thing that matters is that for each of the two men [sic] the other happens as a particular other, that each becomes aware of the other and is thus related to him in such a way that he does not regard and use him as his object, but as his partner in a living event. . . . it is my privilege as man that by the hidden activity of my being I can establish an impassable barrier to objectification. (pp. 74–75)

To turn someone into an object (as happens in the “social”) is to make of a person an object for potential use. Over against this I-It relationship, in the interpersonal I-Thou relationship, the other person is “particular,” specific unto her/himself. This person is, now, a “living event” for which our definitions (which we used to fit that person into the “social”) cannot account. The other person escapes codification and becomes “particular.” While ignoring this specificity may be necessary for political action, it does not achieve that relation which is a connection (is freedom through communion). Buber provides a more detailed description of the interhuman. He writes, [B]y the . . . interhuman I mean solely actual happenings between men [sic] . . . tending to grow into mutual relations. The sphere of the interhuman is one in which a person is confronted by the other. We call this unfolding the dialogical. . . . [The interhuman cannot be] understood . . . as psychological . . . [T]he hidden accompaniment to conversation . . . is to be found neither in one of the two partners nor in both together, but only in their dialogue itself, in this ‘between’ which they live together. (p. 75)

The interhuman, or “betweenness,” exists neither as a personal possession of each person nor as entirely outside each person. It is not psychological which, for the most part, focuses on each individual psyche. It is not two people just talking with each other. Imagine a curriculum meeting in which we treat each other not as repositories of political demands and needs, not as representatives of specific groups but as people speaking in connection, open to the other’s words not as political demands but as statements of a deep humanness. I wrote, in Chapter 4 (“Wild Imagination and the Critical Project”), of a high school district Curriculum Council meeting with myself as an ex officio University representative. I wrote of that meeting in the context of establishing beingness for the students in three of the high schools, rather than as political pawns for who had the power to control student’s learning opportunities. Once we could understand the individuality of the learners and their equal status as human beings, a resolution to the curriculum conflict could be found that honored the beingness of each person. Not only was the vision of who were the learners changed, but there was a palpable (although temporary) change in the relationships between the curriculum negotiators. To some degree the possibility of treating each other in

Freedom As Dialogue

113

the interhuman existed. How can we understand how this could happen? We can do so by examining Buber’s contrast between what he terms “speechifying”/“seeming” and the interhuman/betweenness. “Speechifying” and “seeming” are both connected with the “social.” In an act of speechifying one person speaks only to be heard. The agenda is to leave an impression, to present a certain image to her/his interlocutor and, in the end, persuade that person of the speaker’s perspective. Buber names this kind of social life “seeming.” It only seems to be a dialogue when, in fact, it is one-way communication. The listener, in turn, is not listening but, rather, preparing her/his response. The listener is not open to being pierced by the other’s words. In the act of “seeming” the person is presenting the world that he or she wants the rest of the world to see, which is her/his own invention of the world. Such speechifying and seeming is “concern[ed] with [the] image... [which is] produced in the other.” (p. 76) The listener’s task is to respond in a manner consonant with the speaker’s desire to be seen in a particular way. The listener’s response has nothing to do with the listener as being just as the speaker is not concerned with the listener as being. (p. 76) The speaker’s only concern is with how s/he is being taken. Speech is designed to turn the listener into the image which the speaker desires to be her/his ideal listener. For the listener, the experience is of “being spoken at” rather than “being spoken with.” Even the speaker as particular human being disappears. The speaker, too, becomes “subservient to the images which [s/he] produces in others.” (p. 78) That is, even the speaker is narrowed to a mere image s/he is projecting onto the world. There is no authenticity in the speaker, and none expected of the listener. This description well describes what occurred in that curriculum deliberation setting. As each person spoke, the image of the speaker which is projected to the listeners replaces the person speaking and the speaker lives as if the image is who s/he is. This is necessary to speechifying as the speaker is only confirmed in her/his status as a person by imposing upon the listener the being the speaker wishes to be. The listener is not present except as a recipient of messages designed to persuade the listener of something about the speaker who is presenting her/himself. “Seeming” is understandable as a move in one’s life, but as the only move to make, it results in what Buber calls “man’s essential cowardice.” (p. 78) Buber tells us that to pursue this form of interaction grounded in “seeming” requires an “analytic, reductive, deriving look between man and man [sic]” (p. 80). What is the problem with being analytic or logical? Buber writes that it tries to contract the manifold person, who is nourished by the microcosmic richness of the possible to some schematically surveyable and recurrent structures . . . it supposes it can grasp what a man[sic] has become, or even is becoming, in genetic formulae . . . even the dynamic central principle . . . can be represented by a general concept. . . . The personal life . . . is levelled down. (pp. 80–81)

That is, the person disappears and a cipher with particular characteristics takes the place of the person. I ask of this description: Is this not the whole move of the political? People are gendered, raced, ethnicized, aged, abled, sexuality-ed, trans-sexuality-ed, liberal, progressive, conservative, and/or intersectionalized. These categories, while politically valuable, leave the whole person out of the discussion. The Ferguson, MO

114

5 Freedom All Too Human

narrative already discussed in Chapter 3 makes this point: the young black woman who was protesting Michael Brown’s death at the hands of a Ferguson policeman, asked how she felt about the protests, stated that while she supported the protests, she wanted to be seen beyond her categories. The political (or, to use Buber’s term the “social”) functions in the sphere of “speechifying” to galvanize political support and those who speak and those who listen are, both, made into reduced humanness, “seeming”-ness, for the purpose of political ends. In the “social” we each become invisible. In contrast to analyzing, categorizing, speechifying, and objectifying, Buber presents the idea of living “from... being”: The one who lives from his [sic] being looks at the other just as one looks at someone with whom he has personal dealings. His look is ‘spontaneous’, ‘without reserve.’ . . . he [sic] is not uninfluenced by the desire to make himself understood . . . but he is uninfluenced by any thought of the idea of himself. (p. 76)

To “live from being” means to live not through the categories that make the world useful to me but through being immediately present to the wholeness of the being before me, without judging the other person or putting her/him into a set of labels that makes the other person legible. It is to try to see the other person as separate from me, rather than see her/him in ways I already think I understand. This is not an easy task. As Buber tells us, it takes courage: [T]o resist [seeming] is [man’s][sic] essential courage . . . One can struggle to come to oneself . . . to come to confidence in being. One struggles, now more successfully, now less, but never in vain . . . One must at times pay dearly for life lived from the being. (p. 78)

What is this “living from the “being?” It is I seeing the other person “without reserve,” in a “spontaneous” manner, not influenced “by the desire to make [myself] understood.” [M]en [sic] communicate themselves to one another as what they are . . . it depends . . . on his letting no seeming creep in between himself and the other . . . on his granting to the man to whom he communicates himself a share in his being. This is a question of the authenticity of the interhuman. (p. 77)

The struggle to not categorize, not objectify, not analyze, not speechify. It “depends on” sharing your own being with the other person in a way that does not hide behind the very categories each of us resists in our own lives. There is, to be sure, a danger with this emphasis on being. Buber worries that we run the danger of being moralistic: “... we must free the concept of uprightness from the thin moralistic tones... [rather] let it take its tone from the concept of bodily uprightness... the fulfillment of human life can only come through the soul’s walking upright...” (p. 77) Many Curriculum Studies scholars speak or write from a declarative position. That is, truths are asserted and “proven” and leveraged for particular curricular purposes. If one disagrees with the truths asserted, either one is wrong or one, being sympathetic to the point of view, provides perhaps some nuanced changes in the perspective. This is what I think Buber means by “moralistic.” While various Curriculum Studies scholars are sincere in their concerns and write of

Freedom As Dialogue

115

concerns perceived of great importance, this does not free them from being vigilant to the ways in which they treat those with whom they don’t agree. Their work becomes an echo chamber of already digested thought. They treat the reader as either a true believer or as someone who will never understand. If we are to be concerned with freedom, as Buber would have it, being is worth the effort of transcending such dismissiveness: the way of true freedom of free giving between I and Thou . . . [it is to] practice directness . . . and not depart from it until scoffers are struck with fear . . . The chief presupposition for the rise of genuine dialogue . . . each should regard his [sic] partner as the very one he is. I become aware . . . that he is different, essentially different from myself, in the definite, unique way which is peculiar to him . . . I accept whom I thus see . . . I struggle with him as his partner, I confirm him as creature and as creation, I confirm him who is opposed to me as him who is over against me. . . . It . . . depends on the other whether genuine dialogue, mutuality in speech arises between us. (p. 79)

We must regard the other as we wish to be regarded: not judged, not categorized, not analyzed. Each of us seeks acceptance and confirmation. Confirmation is not a matter of confirming specific attributes but confirming the sheer existence of the other person as someone I cannot know but feel her/his presence as each of us struggles to speak in “mutuality.” How do we accomplish this? Buber writes: To be aware of a man (sic) . . . means to perceive the dynamic centre which stamps his every utterance, action, and attitude with the recognizable sign of uniqueness. . . . this wholeness and its centre do not let themselves be known to contemplation or observation. It is only possible when I step unto an elemental relation with the other. . . when he becomes present to me. (p. 80)

This state of life is something different from our ordinary, everyday way of living. Regardless of what s/he does in her/his everyday life, a person’s value is not based on what she or he does or accomplishes but only on his or her sheer existence and nothing else. No matter those everyday actions, each person is unique and is embraced for that wholeness that transcends the categories we use to “make sense” of others. Buber calls this recognition “an elemental relation with the other” in which the person “becomes present to me.” How do we begin to approach this state of recognizing being, of being in the interhuman? It is at this moment that imagination enters the picture. . . . we must develop ‘imagining the real’. . . a bold swinging . . . into the life of the other. . . . This is the nature of all genuine imagining . . . here the realm of my action is . . . the particular real person who confronts me, whom I can attempt to make present . . . in his [sic] wholeness, unity, and uniqueness . . . with his dynamic centre which realizes all these things ever anew. (p. 81)

This “’imagining the real’” is a genuine feat of imagination as we try to transcend all our learned responses we have toward another, those “seeming” states each of us occupies, in favor of the other as wholly separate not just from me and my prejudices but free in her/himself of the categories that bind. It is not that the categories disappear, any more than that we stop living lives of “seeming.” We act in the dialectical manner of recognizing the acts of seeming in order to live beyond them into “being.” We

116

5 Freedom All Too Human

do not drop “seeming,” but we see through it and its problematics, while knowing that “seeming” is also part of our lives. This is parallel with Buber’s linked notions of I-It and I-Thou which are lived both in our lives, not one or the other. We vibrate back and forth between them, between “seeming” and “being” but we know that this vibration is necessary for the balance of our human lives. If we spend more time in “seeming” and in the I-It consciousness, that does not lessen the power of “being,” the power of I-Thou, and the power of dialogue. Buber is very clear, in all his work, that we cannot live permanently in these states, but simultaneously he insists that experiencing these states changes everything, if only we are open to them. Finally, we come to the “point” of the interhuman: dialogue. The interhuman is necessary for the act of dialogue and dialogue is the moment when the I-Thou relationship is known. This I-Thou relation is, as already discussed, central to freedom. But what of dialogue? Buber uses the term “genuine dialogue” to distinguish it from ordinary dialogue or speechifying which is an act of “seeming.” In genuine dialogue the turning to the partner . . . is a turning of the being. . . . make the other present as a whole and as a unique being. . . . the speaker does not merely perceive . . . he receives . . . he confirms this other being, so far as it is for him to confirm.” The true turning of his person . . . includes this . . . acceptance . . . such a confirmation does not mean approval, but no matter what I am against the other, by accepting him as my partner in genuine dialogue, I have affirmed him as a person. . . . if genuine dialogue is to arise . . . he must be willing on each occasion to say what is really in his mind about the subject of the conversation . . . on each occasion he makes the contribution of his spirit without reduction and without shifting his ground. (p. 85) To keep nothing back is the exact opposite of unreserved speech. Everything depends on the legitimacy of ‘what I have to say.’ . . . To speak is both nature and work, something that grows and something that is made . . . it has to fulfill ever anew the unity of the two. . . . where dialogue is fulfilled in its being, between partners who have turned to one another in truth, who express themselves without reserve and are free of the desire for semblance, there is brought into being, a . . . common fruitfulness . . . found nowhere else. . . . the word arises in a substantial way between men [sic] who have been seized in their depths and opened out by the dynamic of an elemental togetherness. (p. 86)

“Receiving... confirming... accepting,” speaking honestly from the heart. This is the center of a dialogical life. And by dialogue, Buber does not always mean actual speaking. A person can be present and not speak and still contribute to the dialogue. Even in such a situation, each must be determined not to withdraw when the course of the conversation makes it proper for him to say what he has to say. . . . No one . . . can know in advance what it is that he has to say; genuine dialogue cannot be arranged before-hand. . . . nothing can be determined, the course is of the spirit and some discover what they have to say only when they catch the call of the spirit. . . . But . . . all . . . without exception, must be of such a nature that they are capable of satisfying the presuppositions of genuine dialogue and are ready to do so.” (p. 88)

Recall that “experiencing the other side” does not require speech. In both Chapters 4 (“Wild Imagination and the Critical Project”) and 6 (“Pure Imagination and Freedom”), words are not the only life cultivated. Body, emotion, presence without words, these states are equally important. A Curriculum Studies practice devoted to Buberian freedom entertains multiple ways of living.

Freedom As Dialogue

117

Freedom and Responsibility This chapter opened noting our seeming lack of responsibility for each other. This discussion of freedom is coming full circle to the opening. Freedom and responsibility belong to each other, and it is our responsibility not only to recognize this relationship but understand its dimensions. As already presented earlier, regarding Sartre, I wrote [f]reedom involves “an ‘anguish’ linked to action on one’s freedom, an anguish due to the recognition of one’s own responsibility for what is happening.” (p.5) As we take personal responsibility for our freedom . . . we experience the anguish of having to make a decision of whose outcome we cannot be sure. Yet freedom to experience this anguish is, for Sartre, a true hallmark of freedom.

From a Buberian perspective on freedom, Sartre’s insistence that we are “responsible for what is happening” as a personal project with its focus on a hyper-individualism can stymie our desire for healing the world. In a sense Sartre remains outside the world as he judges for what he is responsible as if the world has nothing to say about it. In a similar vein, most Curriculum Studies scholarship looks at the world rather than being in the world, allowing the world to speak to it in its multifarious instantiations. (See Chapter 3 for a discussion of the kind of openness to others which is explored there.) In this sense, the idea that we might heal the world is not possible when we only look at and are not in the world. Thus, to ask Curriculum Studies scholars to address our present condition in the vacuum of not knowing who we are addressing (in the way that Buber would have us address each other) maintains us in the cycle of freedom as a purely personal possession of the single person. To ask us to recognize our own responsibility as if those affected have no meaning for that responsibility occludes the presence of another human being. Such an occlusion might appear arrogant, but not in a mean-spirited way. It is only arrogant in that it is not clear this occlusion presents us with that connection which, according to Buber, is the result of freedom through dialogue. The kind of responsibility consonant with Buber is grounded not in what we know of the world (which we think enables us to make recommendations about the world or take responsibility for the world) but grounded in standing ready to be called by another who does not even yet know that s/he is calling. Such issues raise the question of how we develop the kind of responsibility called for by Buber. How do we come to know our responsibility? To examine this question, I will present the outlines of Emmanuel Levinas’ ethics as a ground for responsibility and its relationship to freedom. This outline will provide a basis for reimagining Curriculum Studies practice (both scholarly practice and working with groups designing curricula) and provide a further way into actualizing Buber’s description of dialogue based on freedom. One demurral must be made. Atterton (2004), acknowledged that his and Buber’s work were often placed together by others, but he took issue with the idea that their work was the same. Levinas wrote of his relationship to Buber as follows: My interest in the intersubjective relation . . . is often united with the philosophy of Buber . . . Certainly Buber entered this field of reflection before me. When one has worked, even

118

5 Freedom All Too Human

without knowing it, in a field that has already been prepared by another, one owes allegiance and gratitude to the pioneer. I do not refuse these to Martin Buber, even if in fact it is not by starting out from the Buberian oeuvre that I may have been led to a reflection on the alterity of the Other. . . . I am therefore very close to the Buberian theses. (p. 32)

Despite this acknowledgment, Levinas asserts that they differ in a fundamental way. Given their mutual focus on the interpersonal, the character of that relationship differs. Levinas writes, [T]he principal thing separating us is what I call the asymmetry of the I-Thou relation. For Buber, the relationship between the I and the Thou is directly lived as reciprocity. My point of departure is Dostoyevsky and his phrase: “We are all culpable for everything and for everyone before everyone, and I more than the others.” The feeling that the I owes everything to the Thou, and that its responsibility for the Other is gratitude, that the other has always – and by right – a right over Me, indeed, everything that I have said . . . about this “I” submitted to obligation, this “I” commanded in the face of the Other – with the double structure of human misery and the word of God – all that represents perhaps a theme that is fundamentally different from that which Buber tackles. (p. 33)

To place Levinas and Buber in the same manner of thinking is, therefore, seemingly disjunctive. However, I do not see this difference as significantly different as does Levinas. That is, I do not see that Buber requires a reciprocity of equality. In his description of the man and the woman, he is not asking us to understand them as equals in the sense of “no difference” but only a feeling from the other side of the presence of another who is precious to each of us. The man belaboring the other man feels the blows but that does not mean that he is the same as the other man. There is a mutuality of respect, of love, of understanding we are fully in this world together and the barriers that separate us are superficial seemings and speechifyings. This relationship might be seen as equalizing but, I would assert, it is not clear that Buber would reject Levinas’ contention that “the other has always – and by right – a right over Me... this “I” commanded in the face of the Other.” In my reading of Buber, we are expected to bring ourselves into a relationship with another that respects that other in the space of the interhuman. I see kinship with Levinas in this. Therefore, bringing Levinas to bear on this discussion can be understood to make sense, with the caveats (above) in mind. We can find this in a further discussion of Buber, in another essay (1929/2002). In that essay Buber describes his vision of the I-Thou moment in a concrete situation. He writes of a meeting held with “men from different European peoples” held during Easter, 1914, in the face of WWI, “in order to make preparations to establish a supranational authority” in the face of “an undefined presentiment of... catastrophe.” (p. 6) In the midst of these conversations, which “were marked by... unreserve,” during which “the fictitious fell away and every word was an actuality” (every word was sincerely meant) the topic of the Jews arose. [A]s we discussed the composition of the larger circle from which public initiative should proceed . . . one of us, a man of passionate concentration and judicial power of love [a friend of Buber], raised the consideration that too many Jews had been nominated, so that several countries would be represented in unseemly proportion by their Jews. . . . Obstinate Jew that I am, I protested against the protest. I no longer know how from that I came to speak

Freedom As Dialogue

119

of Jesus and to say that we Jews knew him from within, in the impulses and stirrings of his Jewish being, in a way that remains inaccessible to the peoples submissive to him. . . . so I directly addressed the former clergyman. He stood up, I too stood, we looked into the heart of one another’s eyes. “It is gone,” he said, and before everyone we gave one another the kiss of brotherhood. The discussion of the situation between Jews and Christians had been transformed into a bond between the Christian and the Jew. In this transformation dialogue was fulfilled. Opinions were gone, in a bodily way the factual took place. (pp. 6–7)

What do we have here? We might see Buber’s assertions, about Jews understanding from the inside versus Christians only understanding as submissives, as speechifying. However, clearly, Buber spoke in a way that connected to the Pastor and allowed the Pastor to feel not speechified but, rather, directly seen and understood and brought into a humble relation to Buber’s Jewishness and his own Christianity. They looked into each other’s eyes. Their differences fell away, and they embraced in an embrace of mutuality, not spoken but deeply felt. At the level of that mutuality, yes, there was reciprocity but there was also what Levinas, above, describes as gratitude for the Other. Buber writes in a tone of gratitude for the Other in the body of the pastor for the pastor afforded the chance for Buber to be seen as an infinite Other and for Buber to see the Pastor as an infinite Other. In this sense, the Other (each of these men) has “a right over me” to be seen as an Other, that Buber had an “obligation” toward the Other to not see the Other as an other, just another person with bad ideas and feelings who Buber needed to speechify. This incident provides a possibility to reconcile the differences between Buber and Levinas asserted by Levinas. On the other hand, it is possible to recognize that Levinas might reject my reconciling of them. I grant that Levinas may be correct in his distinction from Buber. I accede that what I am about to describe which is different from Buber makes sense to me as does Buber’s avowal of the I-Thou moments. There is, I would argue, no need to reconcile these two perspectives but, rather, allow us to live within the contradiction of the dialectic. The dialectical döppelgangers are reciprocity (evenness of connection)/heteronomy (unevenness of connection as one person, the Other, is above the person who experiences responsibility for the Other). (This idea of heteronomy will be discussed below.) They may be seen as supplements to each other rather than in full agreement with each other. So, despite a possibly significant difference, I place them together in this work as they at least supplement each other, if not fully echo each other. And so, to Levinas. Emmanuel Levinas’ focus was on the life of responsibility as the basis for an ethical life. For Levinas ethical life is grounded in the humility of understanding that we do not know and can never know. Conventionally, in an ethical life, we are supposed to come to know what is the right, or ethical, thing to do as most systems of ethics put forth positive principles of how to act or how to determine how to act. For instance, a deontologist views our responsibility as coming to know our absolute duty and then acting according to that duty. A utilitarian, consequentialist views maximizing what is determined to be the “good” to be maximized as the essence of an ethical life. A communitarian draws knowledge of the good from what is good for the community as a whole. In all these cases, this is no surety that people will enact what is proposed. Knowing does not always translate into action. If this is

120

5 Freedom All Too Human

so, then how do we move in the direction of fulfilling what we determined was our responsibility? For Levinas, as with Buber, responsibility is grounded in the immediacy and presence of another person. In Levinas’ case, presence is grounded in a humility of letting go of our sureness of knowing another. In so doing, we will be able to address freedom in a new way. Levinas’ ethics begins with the idea of what Levinas terms “metaphysical desire” (1969, p. 3). Levinas tells us that we all desire connection with something which is beyond us, which transcends all that we know, what he images as a “far-off land” that is complete and not caught in time. This desire means that we are always seeking something that always transcends the moment. Where do we encounter such an experience? Levinas begins by describing how we form a self in the world in a parallel fashion to Buber’s I-It relationship. We form a self by taking all the world that is outside ourselves and transforming it into something we can use. We take what is different or other than ourselves and change it into something we understand. We do so by naming the objects of the world around us. We fit what is other than ourselves into our already understanding of the world and make it, in Levinas’ language, “same.” That is, we take what is different and not us into something we know so that it conforms to what we know and becomes us, becomes same. Making other same is a natural process and quite understandable but it has yet to offer us that transcendental life for which we yearn. Ironically, to find that transcendental moment, we must form a discrete self. It is not, therefore, wrong to form a self by turning all the world around us into serving the self we are constructing. Levinas has a term for this process: totalization. We reduce the world, through words, to what we already know. We make the world, so we totally understand it through this process of accommodation to the self we are crafting. But, as we do this, as we make other same, we preclude experiencing something outside ourselves, we preclude metaphysical desire. As it turns out, this process is not as easy as it might seem. It turns out the world is not necessarily amenable to our schemes. We must craft responses to these resistances to make useful the resources the world affords. There is nothing in the world that we name that does not escape the boundaries of that name. That is, in order to fit anything into a name (“leaf”) we must ignore that this specific “thing” (what we call a leaf) has many attributes it shares with others of its “kind” (other leaves) but also is unique, is not a “leaf” because there is no such entity as a “leaf,” only a name, “leaf,” that finds common features among a seemingly similar set of objects but, therefore refuses that which makes this object unique, therefore not a leaf. In this struggle with the world, there is one “thing” that entirely resists our attempts to name it so that it becomes useful. That “thing” is another person. It is not that other entities in the world do not resist. But how can a leaf resist us? We are satisfied that when we see a “leaf” and name it as such, we have adequately “captured” it for ourselves. But no person submits to this. If we come to recognize this, we come to see that the name we applied, the ways in which through naming we had successfully totalized (made understandable) everything else, is not functioning here. We become awake to this other being that we don’t and cannot understand. We cannot make other same. This other being lives in what Levinas terms “radical alterity” or radical otherness, complete otherness, or what Levinas images as the Other. Entirely other

Freedom As Dialogue

121

from us. In this state of Other, the Other is “known” (although the point is the Other can never be known) as completely infinite because no name can capture “it.” The Other is infinite possibility. As the Other is infinite possibility, we become humbled before the Other as we enter into a relationship with “something” that is greater than anything we might have thought. Infinity. Levinas tells us we are in a heteronomous relationship. It is not a debasement of us but an elevation of the Other. Ironically, infinity is fragile since at any moment infinity is displaced by the ongoing attempt each of us enacts to name the Other as an other, attempts to force the Other into something the Other is not, a name. In recognizing the infinity of the Other we realize we must take great care with the Other. In the face of that moment, Levinas tells us, responsibility for the Other is born. Responsibility is at the heart of ethical life as we come to see the Other as a neighbor to whom we open our home, our life in the ways we feel about our neighbor, when that neighbor is truly a neighbor (which does not mean a “perfect” neighbor in our eyes but only a neighbor no matter who that neighbor is). We are almost commanded to care for the Other. We cannot escape our responsibility for the Other. How do we ever come to encounter this possibility of humility, of the Other, of the infinite, of responsibility? Levinas offers us a way of noticing this moment (which happens all the time, but we cannot make it happen but must be open to it). Levinas (1998) distinguishes between what he calls “the said” and the “saying” (discussed in more detail in the Introduction, Chapters 2 and 4). “The said” are the words we speak. When we speak, our words automatically freeze the world into the category or categories we deploy to make sense of the world. Words totalize by bounding the world into knowledge we already possess. But, and this is the heart of the matter and connects Levinas to Buber, just prior to the uttering of a word, of “the said” there is “saying” the prior moment in which what we are about to say could be anything, is infinite, is bringing the Other into focus but not yet at all focused. Before there is this person before me, there is what Levinas terms Face, the face we know before we know it. In that “before we know it,” that “saying,” we recognize the infinity, the infinite potential of the Other and we are called to protect that infinity from being reduced to something I already know. I think this is akin to Buber’s I-Thou experience. What has this to do with freedom? We become responsible for the Other’s freedom. How can this be? With Levinas, we must begin by noting that this state of responsibility for the Other is not an abstraction, not an intellectual feat. We do not choose it with our rational faculty to choose to be responsible. We are not acting in a practical manner such as: “it would be good to be responsible for another because, if everyone were responsible for each other we would have a harmonious world.” No, it is not through reasoning that we achieve our knowing of responsibility. Rather, as Levinas puts it: Truth as respect for being is the meaning of metaphysical truth…Reason and freedom seem to us to be founded on prior structures of being whose first articulations are delineated by the metaphysical movement, or respect, or justice – identical to truth. (1969, pp. 302–303)

122

5 Freedom All Too Human

Truth, Levinas is averring, is not rational or reason. It precedes reasoning in which we know our respect for the Other because we have encountered the entirely transcendental Other that is beyond reason. We have let go of our desire to control and name and, at last, we know the metaphysical although, ironically, since we cannot know infinity, the relationship is grounded in the fact we will never know the Other. It is that “never knowing” that is the metaphysical. In that responsibility, we are responsible for the freedom of the Other who must not be caught, not named, not destroyed through naming. There is a dilemma that we must confront. While we may recognize our responsibility for an individual Other, there are Others for whom we cannot, at this moment, be responsible. What are we to do with this dilemma? John Llewellyn (1999) describes Levinas’ response in this way: I am obliged to respond to this human being, and in doing so I fail to respond to another whose need may be no less great and no less urgent. Justice is injustice. . . . what it is in my power to do, I can reach a balanced judgement about what obligation is most binding. (p. 214)

We are obliged to respond to a particular person, and we therefore are not responding to another Other. We must determine, make priorities, as to what we will do now. Llewellyn continues, . . . where an equally binding obligation has to be neglected I can at least attempt to meet the obligation to make reparation to the person who was in the first place arbitrarily ignored. I may decide that I can do something to help the widow and nothing to help the orphan on the grounds that I was here and not there. But the fact that I cannot be everywhere is no alibi. That no more shields me from the orphan’s accusation than my failure to take responsibility for the other’s freedom is excused by the thought that his freedom is no concern of mine. My responsibility to the widow and the orphan is a responsibility to the stranger and everyone is a stranger to me in ethical fraternity or sorority. For everyone as a face I carry an impossible responsibility that provides the absolute incalculable contextless circumstance of the relative circumstances. (pp. 214–215)

Justice is always injustice. Freedom here means lack of freedom somewhere else. We cannot be everyplace at once. We must always confront our limitations. In so doing, we find that our freedom to act, to face the Other, is always what Llewellyn terms a “difficult freedom.” Choices are always made. Just so, in Curriculum Studies, when we avow some person or persons with our concern, we simultaneously ignore someone else. This is injustice, no matter the rationalizations we might make for our ignoring one person or group in curriculum for another. It is important to understand this dimension of freedom. So far, freedom has been posited as a positive value: either for the purpose of freeing a person from oppressions or for the purpose of dialogue. These are optimisms as, conventionally, freedom is seen, especially in the Western tradition of individuality, as an unmitigated “good.” But here, in the end, Llewellyn presents its difficulties. We see what is lost, who is left out. We see this without excuse but recognizing that we must always act and that our actions are always limited. Freedom is negative freedom. Justice is negative justice. This tempers our love of freedom. It also places the responsibility for freedom at the heart of ethical life, at the heart of our relationship to another person and to others.

Freedom As Dialogue

123

As I recast freedom, I find the necessary humility for acting not with caution (we must be bold) but with understanding the tensions that make freedom all too human, in our frailties and unavoidable foibles and mistakes. In this sense, freedom does not free us. Rather, we are free to not be free of our responsibilities toward the Other, no matter we may fail in those responsibilities. In this, freedom is indispensable to our ethical lives and to our lives lived in full recognition of our inevitable and humble connection to our world and those in it.

Freedom in Curriculum Studies Practices How can Buber/Levinas and their analyses change or effect our scholarship and practice? Initially, we can say that our scholarship and practice can be grounded in Buberian dialogue as described earlier and grounded in Levinas’ focus on “not knowing” and its attendant humility. I cannot say what the practice is (that is for us to have a genuine dialogue) but I can say that we must respond to this dilemma. In terms of freedom, as I have laid out the ways in which freedom is not the end result of dialogue but the contributing platform for it, there would not be a curriculum practice that would make freedom central to our concerns. There would be, however, both a curriculum practice and curricular solutions to curricular problems that could be grounded in the kind of freedom described herein. In what follows I will offer some practices, for curriculum deliberations and resulting curricula as well as for doing Curriculum Studies thinking, that reflect the way dialogue steeped in freedom can be made core to our practice and resulting designs. We have already seen that, for Buber, “[f]reedom is only of value as a springboard for responsibility and communion.” (Friedman, 2002, p. 106) This implies that our curricular practice might focus on responsibility and communion. Maurice Friedman, a world-renowned Buberian scholar, tells us why. The true person is again and again required to detach and shut himself [sic] off from others, but this attitude is alien to his innermost being: man wants openness to the world, he wants the company of others. Through relation the whole man shares in an absolute meaning which he cannot know in his life by himself. (pp. 106–107).

Without freedom there is no connection, but only a constrained life. Recalling that communion, the being with another, is the opposite of license, the freedom from others, we can see, again, that true humanness is grounded not in isolation but grounded in relationship. In this frame of mind, I pose some questions. What if our Curriculum Studies scholarship were so grounded, that care was taken with anyone who read our work and it was not just destined for the true believers? What if in our writing/thinking we tried to honor the reader, not as someone to persuade but as a reach across the words to honor the reader? I see such writing/thinking as the epitome of teaching in that the only purpose is to provide opportunities for each of us to have a lived experience as described by Buber through his writing. What would such scholarship be like?

124

5 Freedom All Too Human

And, in our curricular practice, in all its forms, could it be grounded in relationship? Relationship means, in the case of Buber and Levinas, an acknowledgment of the complexity and beingness of another person. When I wrote of the young woman and false consciousness in Chapter 3, I wrote of honoring her self-understanding, not simply showing her the ways she was deluded (living in false consciousness). In that relationship I reached for the interpersonal, not the social. This suggests that in all our scholarship we might treat those with whom we disagree as living in a real world, even if it appears to be not our world. We might honor that they had something to say, just as Diane Ravitch’s thinking on multi-cultural education had something to say to those who opposed her that complexified a difficult topic. There were no completely right answers to the multi-cultural question. These are small examples of a different way of being with others. Small examples, however, are the dailyness of our lives, for what else is there in life but small moment followed by small moment? In parallel fashion, in our field of Curriculum Studies, to move toward dialogue and humility does not necessarily mean asking a community what they want and need. Our task cannot be simply to provide for those desires and facilitate that approach to curriculum designs. They may be grounded in the kind of politics that prevents the interhuman because it continues the tradition of dividing us across various identity fault lines. If we understand these fault lines, then we can recognize that reaching for a genuine connection of our common humanity is, at best, difficult. We can facilitate their communion with their traditions but, if we stop there then we have not yet, according to Buber, achieved freedom because we have not seen those traditions as the bridge to dialogue but as a stopping place that keeps us separate from each other. It does not mean we do not perform scholarship designed to feature the voices of those whose voice has not been heard. But, while these forms of scholarship are important and of value, they leave out the dimension of freedom and responsibility presented here as they remain committed to identity and politics. This Buberian approach seeks a Curriculum Studies practice steeped in facilitating being present to the possibility of Thou no matter the interlocutor, understanding freedom as communion with the Other. And this communion with the Other is grounded in Levinas’ avowal of not knowing and, in such “not knowing” coming into connection with the infinity of the Other and the Other’s vulnerability, no matter who the Other is. On a more concrete note, I have, in my work as a curriculum development facilitator used practice for revealing inner states of mind not necessarily obvious to each of us. This work is situated in an insight of Decker Walker’s which he asserted many decades ago. In an essay titled “A Naturalistic Model for Curriculum Development” (1971/2002), Walker went in search of how the Tyler Rationale was being used by curriculum committees and designers. Much to his surprise, he found that Tyler was not being used. As he continued to observe these practices, he noted their particulars, not as necessarily being fully present in their practices but, at the very least, hinted at. Out of his observations he constructed a curriculum development practice grounded in what people were actually doing. He described a tripartite process that was not linear but, rather, reiterative in which any one of elements might be visited repeatedly if the group saw the need. These three elements were

Freedom in Curriculum Studies Practices

125

• Establish a common platform among the participants or, in the case of solo curriculum design, establish your own platform, • Deliberate in the group what needs to be in the curriculum and not in the curriculum • From these deliberations craft a curriculum. Of these, Walker asserted that the establishment of a common platform was most important. This establishment begins by sharing individual platforms so that we might understand each other better before any talk of curriculum specifics occurs. How do we do this in a dialogical manner? He recommended discussion to proceed through many ways of sharing one’s images of education: perhaps favorite films or books that meant something about how the person saw education. It was, always, in words but skirted the tendency to make simple declarations of beliefs (he had specific components of platforms as guides to the talking). If each of us could consciously cultivate a listening attitude, this would begin the development of the interhuman in its simplest terms. In this he was recommending a curriculum practice that was steeped in dialogue (even if he didn’t describe it in Buber’s way) and the interpersonal. I have taken Walker’s idea of platforms and transformed them in my curriculum development work and teaching into ways into dialogue. In my work as a consultant in several curriculum development projects, I took Walker’s idea seriously through non-verbal practices. My purpose was to avoid people simply stating their positions and not listening to each other (thus unknowingly avoiding “seeming” and “speechifying,” unknowing because I wasn’t aware, at the time, of Buber’s essay on the interpersonal). To get around people’s tendency to speak and not listen, thus acting, politically, to impose those ways on others, I had the curriculum designers divide into small groups. Each group was, then, to imagine, without words, their image of an ideal learner. They would then make a drawing of this person together without talking. The image was not to be representational but abstract (to avoid the plea of “I’m not an artist”). Again, to emphasize, they were to work without talking. After all the groups were done, all drawings (on large sheets of butcher paper) were displayed on the wall and were presented by each group I asked them to address both what did they see in their own image and what was the process like? I pointed out that this process was a form of curriculum deliberation. While it might have been possible for the images and presentations to be simply gestures of “speechifying” it never failed that they surprised even the makers of that particular image. The conversations became more pliant and revealing and helped the group cohere, not around a singular vision of the learner and curriculum process, but around the variety of more understandable visions of the learner and curriculum process. This became the basis for the curriculum work, and we could reference this opening experience during the work to see what was being learned about the humanness of the activity. In the form of “verbal” dialogue I have tried to break through the tendency to not listen. I have already described one of those practices in the multiple discussions in this book of the curriculum deliberation at the high school Curriculum Council. There, I interrupted the “speechifying” to read back to the group what I was hearing and other ways of considering the proposals. There was no teaching of what I might

126

5 Freedom All Too Human

term “good” curriculum practice based on the ideas in this chapter. There was simply an effort to undercut the politics in favor of the human and have each hear the other. In my undergraduate teaching I used a practice titled “Council” that attempts to break through the alienation we experience in our world of seeming and speechifying. Council, derived from Native American Indian practice (Zimmerman & Coyle, 1991), appears to provide a way into dialogue as its purpose is to come to decisions in a group or coming to understand the dimensions of a question via listening fully to what each of us has to say and building consensus through attention to the Other rather than debating points of view (speechifying). Briefly, Council requires each person to listen openly to the expressed life of the Other with a focus on listening. It employs three “rules.” One: “listen from the heart” (truly listen, do not form a response while the speaker is speaking but listen wholly to the speaker). Two: speak from the heart (speak honestly about your sense of whatever it is we are speaking to). Three: speak briefly so as to not dominate the conversation. (For more on my use of Council, see Blumenfeld-Jones, 1995.) Students reported that they felt more present in a classroom than they had ever experienced. They literally said, “I have never felt anyone was listening before.” They felt an openness to each other and a support for who they were, rather than ciphers for others’ agendas. There were no “right” or “wrong” statements but only states of being. This was the functional state of freedom to be who they were, to report their connections with their “destiny” as each person presented the grounds of their own lives before being in this classroom and a connection with each person in the class. In this they were experiencing communion. In the above examples, speechifying and seeming become undercut and a genuine coming together informs not only the curriculum that emerges but informs the experience of the process of curriculum making. These kinds of political concerns can certainly be present, but they become, now, dimensions of betweenness rather than substitutions for them. There can be an oscillation between “seeming” and “interhuman.” And freedom becomes the basis for the curriculum in the form of the interhuman, the dialogue, the I-Thou. I present the above with trepidation. I often find that providing “examples” functions as a reductionist and inadequate representation of the thought. They seem so much less interesting than the ideas that support them. In this case, I feel that the experiences I have presented are robust. In each curriculum development case, the participants reported their own astonishment on the ways they were able to move past the usual political “fights” between curriculum deliberators as each person would have typically vied for the power to have her or his ideas become the favored ideas. Now there seemed to be listening and genuine presence to each other. In the high school Curriculum Council event, the results were short-lived, but they did accomplish bringing people into a common space of attention and caring during that one afternoon. In the case of Council, the first time I used it, I was teaching in an alternative teacher prep program (Teaching for a Diverse Future). The practice of Council transformed our semester-long work together. This was noted by the other faculty involved with this teacher preparation program. The students had been fractious and divided during the first semester of the program. Following the first Council experience in the second week of the second semester of the program, the dynamics of the

Freedom in Curriculum Studies Practices

127

group shifted, and the rest of the faculty asked what I had done to accomplish this. I told them of Council. I continued to do Council with my undergraduate teaching, no matter the course I was teaching. These are but a few examples of actively deploying freedom to be present to one another in the interest of dialogue and the interhuman. The false consciousness example is a more informal instance of dialogue and the interhuman. It is, in some ways, the more powerful example. Amid what could be the usual teacher-informsthe-learner-of-her-errors-in-thinking, the young woman’s self-understanding was honored while also presenting an alternative. Such a situation can, if used consistently, provide the conditions for genuine dialogue. It is not enough to form new practices that might promote a life of dialogue in Curriculum Studies. We must directly inform people of Buber’s vision of the interpersonal and of freedom (communion with the world, nature, and other beings, released into a life of dialogue) and Levinas’ understanding of what constitutes an ethical life (acting on felt responsibility toward another individual who is an infinite, precious Other). This informing becomes the common basis for working together as well as considering what one might want in a curriculum. It is only proper to inform people rather than manipulate them without their knowledge of the practice. It prepares them to work together in this Buberian manner and to live in the world in responsibility for the Other. To be sure, “experiencing the other side,” living the “interhuman,” living for the Other aren’t practices but availabilities. It is, however, necessary to be aware of the possibilities and to be able to recognize when one is speechifying and seeming or using another for one’s own ends. In this way, we stand a chance of reimagining our Curriculum Studies work in the light of humility. What does all this mean for freedom in curriculum thinking? We would have to understand freedom in a deeper way, not just as a “thing” we value but as a way of living. Buber’s and Levinas’ thinking is descriptive, not prescriptive or proscriptive as they describe an experience many of us have had although we might not have had the understanding to understand it as such. We might not, even, have understood how important it was, although likely we know it was powerful. We might have dismissed Buber’s I-Thou moment and Levinas’ moment of seeing the other as Other with all that this means, as one-off experiences, moments but go on with our lives of habit that places us on a track upon which we are not aware we are walking. We take our lives for granted. All the underpinnings of any orientation are accepted as the givens upon which our practice depends. To take Buber and Levinas seriously is to shake those underpinnings, to call into question all the foundations of our thought and life. It is to struggle with our own shortcomings. It is to no longer be sure of ourselves. And with that, our true education begins. We must unlearn ourselves if we are to learn anything. Beyond that, no one can say definitively what Curriculum Studies scholars should do with this analysis. It is up to us to have that dialogue for which Buber calls, to begin to experience that life of acknowledging radical alterity and the humility it bears to us which Levinas avows. Freedom is not a thing but a state, a moment, fleeting, changeable, known not by its attributes but by the feeling states engendered when we come to acknowledge that I-Thou and ethics of humility are reality.

128

5 Freedom All Too Human

References Atterton, P., Calarco, M., & Friedman, M. (2004). Levinas & Buber: Dialogue and difference. Pittsburgh, PA, USA: Duquesne University Press. Belenky, M. F., Clinchy, B. M., Goldberger, N. R., & Tarule, J. M. (1986). Women’s ways of knowing: The development of self, voice, and mind. Basic Books. Berlin, I. (2013). Two concepts of liberty. The Isiah Berlin Virtual Library. Blumenfeld-Jones, D. S. (1995). Critical democratic teacher preparation and the practice of council. Teaching Education, 7(2), 45–50. Buber, M. (1923/1958). I and Thou, 2nd ed. (Trans. Ronald Gregor Smith). Scribners. Buber, M. (1929/2002). Dialogue. In Between man and man (Trans. Ronald Gregor Smith) (pp. 1– 45). Routledge. Buber, M. (1947/2002). Education. In Between man and man (Trans. Ronald Gregor Smith) (pp. 98– 122). Routledge. Buber, M. (1965). Elements of the interhuman. In M. Friedman (Ed.), The knowledge of man, selected essays (pp. 72–88). Harper Torchbooks. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. The Free Press/Macmillan Publishing Co. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. Collier Books/Macmillan Publishing. Dewey, J. (2002). The psychological aspect of the school curriculum. In J. R. Gress (Ed.), Curriculum: Frameworks, criticism, and theory (pp. 165–174). Friedman, M. S. (2002). Martin Buber: The life of dialogue (4th ed.). Routledge. Gilligan, C. (1993). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Harvard University Press. Greene, M. (1988). The dialectic of freedom. Teachers College Press. Hopkins, N. (2015). Freedom as non-domination, standards and the negotiated curriculum. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 49(4), 607–618. Kliebard, H. (2004). The struggle for the American curriculum, 1893–1958 (3rd ed.). Routledge. Kohlberg, L. (1981). The philosophy of moral development: Moral stages and the idea of justice. Harper and Row. LeGuin, U. K. (2014). The dispossessed. Harper Perennial Classics. Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority (Trans. Alphonso Lingis). Duquesne University. Levinas, E. (1998). Otherwise than being or beyond essence (Trans. Alphonso Lingis). Duquesne University. Llewelyn, J. (1999). The hypocritical imagination: Between Kant and Levinas. Taylor and Francis Group. Maslow, A. (1962/1998). Toward a psychology of being (3rd ed.). Wiley. Mueller, J. (2012). Anarchism, the state, and the role of education. In R. Haworth (Ed.), Anarchist pedagogies: Collective actions, theories, and critical reflections on education (pp. 14–31). PM Press. Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education. University of California Press. Piaget, J. (1968). Six psychological studies (Trans. Anita Tenzer & David Elkind). Vintage Books. Read, H. (1947). The philosophy of anarchism. Freedom Press. Reisman, D., Glazer, N., & Denney, T. (1963). The lonely crowd: A study of the changing American character. Yale University Press. Rogers, C. (1994). Freedom to Learn (2nd ed.). Pearson. Walker, D. (1971/2002). A naturalistic model for curriculum development. In J. R. Gress (Ed.), Curriculum: Frameworks, criticism, and theory (pp. 489–502). McCutchan Publishing. Wilson, C. (1956). The outsider. Houghton-Mifflin. Zimmerman, J., & Coyle, V. (1991, March–April). Council. In The Utne reader (pp. 79–85).

Chapter 6

Pure Imagination and Freedom

Abstract This chapter presents an approach to a curriculum for nurturing imagination through the analysis of a children’s song, “Pure Imagination.” The problem of the idea of “pure imagination” is interrogated. This is followed by treating the song as a species of what the anthropologist Sherry (Ortner in Am Anthropol 75:1338–1346, 1973) termed a key scenario symbol that contains instructions for how to live a proper life. To elaborate a schema for such a curriculum, the analysis of the song focuses on linguistic structure arrayed across semantics, vocabulary, conceptual organization, and concrete actions taken to foster imagination, all of this presented as keys to conceptualizing a curriculum of imagination. The analysis is also used to think through imagination and curriculum thinking in a more general way, including its lack in present-day curriculum thinking. Keywords Imagination · Martin Buber · Curriculum development · Curriculum studies · Dialectics [In this chapter rather than presenting various theoretical perspectives on imagination, the song below will be used to leverage a possible curriculum of imagination. The song will also be used to think about curriculum in general. I begin with confronting the idea of a “pure” imagination itself. This will be followed by the analysis of the song. More general curriculum discussions will be interspersed with the analysis of the song.] Come with me and you’ll be In a world of pure imagination. Take a look, and you’ll see, Into your imagination. We’ll begin with a spin, Traveling in the world of my creation. What we’ll see will defy explanation. If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it. Anything you want to, do it. Want to change the world? There’s nothing to it. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 D. S. Blumenfeld-Jones, Reimagining Curriculum Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9877-4_6

129

130

6 Pure Imagination and Freedom

There is no life I know To compare with pure imagination. Living there you’ll be free, If you truly wish to be. (From “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” music and lyrics: Leslie Briscusse and Anthony Newley)

Pure Imagination and Freedom In the “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” movie “pure imagination” is central to the themes of the film and can be seen as something frivolous. In our “real” world so rife with problems, how can it be justified to rely on something so fanciful to address our problems? Certainly, its manifestation in the movie (Willy Wonka’s multi-hued land of candy and its equally odd workers) is fanciful and disconnected from the climate crisis, rampant racism, classism and more. “Pure” itself appears to be disconnected from the mundane, from the everyday as well as many crises. Throughout the song, imagination appears to be something that seems to separate a person from that problem filled and ordinary world. If this is the case, then why even entertain the possibility of imagination, if it takes us away from caring about this very real world in which we live? A dialectical analysis of “pure imagination” reveals a conundrum with the above questions and concerns as well as with “pure” itself. Pure imagination cannot exist if what we mean by “pure” is free from everything. If this is the case, “pure imagination” as a state of consciousness cannot exist. Howso? Thinking dialectically, beginning with the word “pure” itself we must imagine its dialectical döppelganger, impure. What would make imagination impure? Merriam-Webster’s dictionary’s first definition of “pure” is: “unmixed with any other matter.” In the context of the film, the “other matter” would have to be anything mundane, the materiality of everyday life. For imagination to be pure it would have to avoid such materiality since an act of imagination is an action of the mind, not of physicality, which is a feature of materiality. But if this were the case for pure imagination (that is, entirely separate from the material, everyday world), then how could we ever understand an imaginative rendering? If imagination were truly disconnected from the material world, then there would be no chance of understanding an imaginative rendering as there would be no reference point for it. The dialectic is now between the “purely fanciful” (detached from reality and in the mind) and “materiality” (the “real,” practical world in which we live). What is this dialectical relationship? First, the “purely fanciful” can be understood as a projection upon the world of a vision that does not exist in reality. Note, I did not write “does not ‘yet’ exist” as is the case with radical imagination (see Chapter 4) which hopes the imagined object can be brought into existence. I wrote “will never exist.” In the “Wild Imagination” chapter the example given was of the Hoover vacuum cleaner placed in the garden as it were a plant. It is not and never could be a plant. It is a machine and has a non-natural, physical referent already

Pure Imagination and Freedom

131

in the world. But this move of pure fancifulness, the vacuum cleaner placed in the garden, brought into view dimensions of material reality (the plant world and the machine world) that did not exist before. The garden itself (and the machine world) are objects that are mute as to their meaning aside from their everyday, mundane meanings but placing them together in this close proximity, meanings emerge which have nothing to do with the reality that the vacuum cleaner is not a plant and the plants do not belong to the machine world. All these facts, objects, and ideas (plants and machines) await our assignment of meaning to them through this act of imagination. Separately, they have no meaning beyond the meanings we have already, in a pedestrian or rational way, assigned each of them. Placing them together in dialectical tension, “fanciful” and “concrete” come to mutually inform each other. The concrete and separate entities (garden and vacuum cleaner) grow in meaning through the invasion of imagination as one foreign and concrete object (the vacuum cleaner) is introduced into a different concrete world from the vacuum cleaner’s origins (the garden) and both foreign objects to each other (the vacuum cleaner and the garden) grow in meaning through their interactions in the same space. More generally, all acts of imagination have material referents in order for us to respond to them. The dialectic of the “fanciful” is always grounded in the material world, is always an expression, albeit an impossible reality, of that real world reimagined and the “concrete,” to gain meaning, must be imagined in various ways to bring that meaning forward. While we often take purely rational thought as making sense of the world, rationality, itself, is only a form of imagining the world since the world does not comport in any material way with the rational thought and patterns we lay upon it. We may discover “things that work” but what works comes in the form of a conversation we have between the material world and our thoughts about it (see David Bohm’s notion that the universe is one large conversation, Bohm & Peat, 1987). In short, imagination cannot exist unless something else exists upon which we can work our imagination. Imagination is always imagination about something. “Pure imagination” is always implicated in the world. Further, “pure imagination” being in the world, it is an expression of a person who acts on the world. This makes “pure imagination” salient to curriculum thinking and practice. But there is more to be said of “pure imagination.” Martin Buber’s vision of artmaking provides one sense of how imagination works. Buber describes the act of artmaking (here substitute for artmaking any expression of imagination, including the act of theorizing) as follows: “[A] man (sic) is faced by a form which desires to be made through him into a work. This form is no offspring of his soul but is an appearance which steps up to it and demands of it the effective power. The man is concerned with an act of his being” (1958, p. 9). The artist or any maker of something, including a theory, has a vision (is faced with a form) which does not exist in the so-called “real” world. That form (the relations between people, between areas of knowledge, between physical parts of the world, or whatever set of relations interests the person taking shape or form within a person’s mind) appears as separate from the world but calls to us to form a work based on that imaginative structure. This form, this imagination is “pure” simply because it is not, yet, of the world in which we live. How often have you had that experience: an insight appears

132

6 Pure Imagination and Freedom

to you, not yet fully formed but calling to you to bring it into being? Out of that demand, you do your work, make your art or theory. Buber tells us that this calling, this form that arises in us is “an act of … being.” This act of being is an expression of our very being. As concrete beings with interests in the world our insights, the intuitions, are grounded in who we are as material, thinking beings. Imagination is “pure” (comes from our response to the world) and “not pure” (is always affected by that response) simultaneously (another dialectic). This vision, this object, this concern, this particular set of relations manifests in an act of imagination and finds form as we make an artwork or form a theory, demanding that each of us, confronted by the form (the skein of relationships), respond to the form’s offer. That is, the world is constantly calling to each of us in all its multifarious ways if we will only pay attention to its call and our connection to it. Walk down an urban street and you’ll feel the buildings calling to you about who they are and what you might know if you would only listen to what they have seen of people. You might have a theory about such buildings and the neighborhood and the people. That theory doesn’t exist in vaccuo. It began as a response to the physical world and your experience of it. Thus, theory, that seemingly most abstract of possible forms, is always anchored in the material world. It, too, is a form of imagination. A theory is really a story of a particular set of relationships between objects or ideas that take shape as a theory (that is, as a form) upon which the theory works. The relationships become the theory which we form to attempt to account for the particular constellations of relationships. But the theory began as something concrete you were experiencing. So, theory (imagination) is always manifest in the world as something material and has a form. It is not abstract because of this grounding in the material in the “stuff” of the world. Buber tells us that a person responds through “an act of his being,” not merely making something, but response with the wholeness of the person responding to the questions the theory or art poses. Responding to the world through this act of making (an art piece or a theory) “includes a sacrifice and a risk … the sacrifice: the endless possibility that is offered up on the altar of the form” (1958, p. 10). As the form (the theory) becomes manifested, brought into physical existence, the form may change, may become more focused, more detailed but, thereby, lose that original fecundity. That is the sacrifice to which Buber refers. The great benefit of this narrowing? By manifesting the form in physical or theoretical terms, the artist or theorist comes to know something about the form (the theory) s/he couldn’t have known prior to manifesting it in physical or theoretical terms. Just as the form (art or theory) changes as it comes into view, so, too, as the person begins to use her/his imagination, the physical or theoretical form that flows from that use, limiting how the vision is realized in concrete reality, if only you are paying attention to the value of these limits. That is, the story you tell is always corrected by the relationships and reality. This is “the risk. … He (sic) who gives himself over to it may withhold nothing of himself. The work … commands” (1958, p. 10). The work (the artwork, the theory) must speak back to us and command we pay attention to it and how it is unfolding, rather than we thinking we are in charge of it. So, novelists have often said: they respond to the demands of the novel, not the

Pure Imagination and Freedom

133

other way around. In this, imagination requires total commitment to its realization in these complex ways. This commitment to an act of imagination carries with it a reward. Once the person has employed and lived through her/his imagination, “… I behold [what I have done], splendid in the radiance of what confronts me, clearer than all the clearness of the world which is experienced” (p. 10). The outcome of the imaginative act is “radiant.” It “confronts me.” It becomes “real, for it affects me, as I affect it. To produce is to draw forth, to invent is to find, to shape is to discover. In bodying forth I disclose. I lead the form across - into the world of It” (1958, p. 10). In the act of imagining, something is drawn forth about the person who is imagining as well as about the world in which the person lives. The invention carries with it a discovery about the original relationship and a discovery about the artist or theorist and her/his relationship to the world. These discoveries are “bodied forth.” That is, imagination, of all kinds, is a bodily state as well as an intellectual act. It occurs only through the sacrifice and risk of imagination. This is, also, the reward of imagining. For all the above, “pure” is a crucial characteristic of imagination. Without it, we would not understand how simultaneously radical and useful is imagination. The song provides yet another reason as to “pure imagination” being salient. As I will note below, freedom is at the heart of the song: “There is no life I know/To compare with pure imagination/Living there you’ll be free …” Living a life of pure imagination leads to a life of freedom. If this song is making any assertion, it is that through the education and cultivation of imagination, in its purest form, freedom is found. If for no other reason, this song is worth our attention. Further, this song provides a vision of the dialogical relationship, adding to our understanding of it for living our lives. This chapter is a witness to this work.

Analysis of “Pure Imagination,” the Song Come with me and you’ll be In a world of pure imagination. Take a look, and you’ll see, Into your imagination. We’ll begin with a spin, Traveling in the world of my creation. What we’ll see will defy explanation. If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it. Anything you want to, do it. Want to change the world? There’s nothing to it. There is no life I know To compare with pure imagination. Living there you’ll be free, If you truly wish to be.

134

6 Pure Imagination and Freedom

Look at the structure of the song overall but look at it backwards. The last verse presents the value of freedom and tells us that if you live “the life … of pure imagination, living there you’ll be free.” While the song seems a paean to pure imagination, the ultimate goal is freedom and pure imagination is but an act taken to achieve that freedom. This verse also tells us that freedom is difficult to achieve since you can only be free “if you truly wish to be.” What it means to “truly wish” is undefined but is clearly the leverage point for achieving freedom. While “truly wish” is the fulcrum of the whole song, it remains a mystery. This lack of definition is not an accident or something forgotten. It tells us that pure imagination and freedom are suffused with mystery. Often, we think of education and curriculum as addressing problems to be solved. So thought Schwab in his infamous essay “The Practical,” asserting that the task of the curriculum thinker was to identify curriculum problems and then suggest various solutions to those problems. But, if we think of becoming educated as involving understanding ourselves and the world around us more than as problems to be solved, then the situation shifts. Gabriel Marcel, an existentialist philosopher, believed that mystery was central to coming to understand. According to Shaun Gallagher (1992) Marcel urged us to distinguish between a ’problem’ and a ‘mystery”. A problem is something that can be totally objectified and resolved in objective terms because the person confronting the problem can completely detach himself from it and view it externally. For instance, my car breaks down … things are relatively clear-cut. A mystery [on the other hand] is something that involves the person in such a way that the person cannot step outside of it in order to see it in an objective manner. … ambiguity is the rule within a mystery. My car is a problem but my existence is a mystery … because I can junk my car or send it to the shop, but I am inextricably immersed in my existence. (Gallagher, p. 152)

This centering of mystery as the heart of coming to understand both ourselves and the world is rare within curriculum thinking and still more rare, I think, that we accept mystery as a permanent state of being. In our various curriculum orientations we deny mystery, preferring either knowledge we can know (knowledge-based orientation), a self upon which we can rely (person-based orientation), a society that functions smoothly (social reproduction-based orientation), or a society constantly correcting for greater and greater freedom (social reconstruction-based orientation). The idea that our knowledge, selves, and society are always a mystery that escapes our control seems unacceptable in our curricular world. But what if it is not possible to know? What if mystery is the real condition of our lives? Each of these curriculum orientations tends to expunge mystery, hoping that all mysteries are challenges to be explained. What do we lose by such explaining? I think this song asks us to consider this question.

Stanza 1—Discovering Your Imagination Come with me and you’ll be In a world of pure imagination.

Analysis of “Pure Imagination,” the Song

135

Take a look, and you’ll see, Into your imagination. In the first stanza, Willy Wonka, the teacher, invites the visitors (learners) to accompany him into his factory (into the world of pure imagination, which is, of course, not the ordinary world). He immediately confronts us with a challenge. We know, from the Dahl book (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which is the basis for the film) and the films (two), that a few lucky children have found in a Wonka chocolate bar a golden ticket as an invitation to visit the highly secretive, mysterious factory in which Wonka candy is made. These visitors have responded to the invitation, thus their presence on the tour of the factory. But they have another invitation to which they must respond: the choice to accept the actual experience, or not. There is nothing in the invitation to coerce their acceptance of what Wonka will present. As such, there is an unspoken “If you wish” in that first line. What are the implications of this unspoken “If you wish”? Thinking curricularly, how often do we invite our learners to come with us under the sign of “if you wish”? Existential education experiments (Summerhill and its offspring) have always offered such an invitation. But why must these be the only forms of curriculum to extend such an invitation? Think of education lived in the everydayness of school life. Do we invite our learners to participate for their own sake? Typically, we coerce their attention and attendance by grades, certifications for the purpose of employability, and attendance laws, no matter the age of the learner. We know that mandatory schooling and mandatory curriculum are no guarantors that the learners forced into the room will actually come with us. Yes, they may be there physically, but what of their whole-hearted, dedicated participation arising from a desire to “know” or “do”? That we cannot mandate. And, perhaps most importantly, we know that while we, the teachers, may share what we know (lectures, readings, classroom activities, assignments), all we can really do is offer these to people who will only do as much as they wish to do, up to whatever degree they want to do it and in whatever way they want. They may choose to participate but rarely is that choice a choice of “I want to know.” Rather, they are participating because this particular curriculum is their springboard to something else, not because it holds some intrinsic value to them. They are always, already, looking beyond the curriculum to a future away from it. The curriculum is merely an instrument for some other desire. But the experience of the curriculum as a value unto itself, this is rarely considered. Couple this issue with the possibility that we do not teach. What do I mean by “we do not teach”? My philosophy mentor once came to observe me teaching an introductory dance class (a way of fulfilling a PE requirement at the university). He pointed out to me that while I thought I was teaching and they were learning, in fact, they were teaching themselves. I only provided the opportunity (the movements, the words, the demonstrations) for them to teach themselves (or not). What he said about my dance class could be said for all teaching. We never teach. We only offer the opportunity for people to teach themselves through their encounters with our productions (our lectures, readings, discussions, activities, and so forth). I have as much as told my students this unacknowledged truth. I have told them that I don’t

136

6 Pure Imagination and Freedom

care if they come to class, I don’t care if they do the assignments, I don’t care if they pay attention. If they’re doing any of this for me, then don’t because I don’t care. Do it for themselves, or not. It is their choice because, while they may be mandated by the powers that be to attend this class (and they have agreed to acquiesce to those powers), it is, in the end, their class, not my class, their experiences, not my experiences. I can’t teach them. Only they can teach themselves. I offer some conditions for their self-teaching, but I cannot teach them; only they can teach themselves. If they are willing to do so, then I am willing to do what I can to enhance their opportunity to teach themselves and, thus, learn. This is the subtlety of Willy Wonka, that he cares not a whit whether or not they take him up on his invitation. He will do what he does and they will join him or not. There is an old Eastern spiritual adage that when the student is ready, the master (teacher) appears. Willy Wonka will be a teacher to those who are ready to be learners. He is addressing those who are disposed to learn. He cannot make someone a learner who is not disposed to be so. In teaching, we are told we must make our classrooms attractive (physically, intellectually, emotionally, and so forth) but this lays little or no responsibility on the learner to take up, or not, our invitation. If there is a “failure” in the classroom, it is always the failure of the teacher to have taught adequately. It is something s/he did or didn’t do. The learner is not responsible. Or the learner is responsible but it is up to the teacher to create the conditions under which the learner can express her/his responsibility. Wonka reverses this relationship of responsibility. He may set the table, but they must eat. And, they are in his home, therefore he expects his learners, his guests will do as he suggests. At the same time, he knows some will not. He knows that those who do not, will not gain anything from him, but there is nothing he can do about that. It is their choice. Specifically, during the tour of the factory (tour of the world?) there will be those who will not heed his warnings about where not to go and what not to do. In this ignoring, there will be consequences. For some who ignore him, they will not have the experience they expected before they began. They already knew what they knew, and his tour didn’t confirm that knowing. Such people will say “There’s nothing here. I can’t use any of this. It’s not useful to me and my project. Wonka’s a fraud.” Others may have an unpleasant experience, perhaps a stomachache or they may get weary from exertion. Such people will say, “I found these experiences unpleasant. I want my life to be pleasant. Therefore, this is not something for me.” (Why must we think that learning is supposed to be “fun?” Learning is hard work, and the joy is in that, not in what is easy.) There are those who will have such unpleasant experiences, but they may decide that it is a call for self-examination. They are willing to ask themselves, “Why did I find this so unpleasant. It went against my expectations. I’m surprised and wonder what I’m missing.” For those who see the teaching as useless, and will reject it, they may, someday, have a realization that they did not understand what was offered. Someday, down the road, they will have some life event that is, suddenly, understandable in the terms Wonka offered those many years ago. They might make a connection of which they were unable to make at the time. I recall reading Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier as a freshman in college (Spring, 1966). This book, set post-WWI, explores marriage and its manifest

Analysis of “Pure Imagination,” the Song

137

difficulties and the naivete of the husband. At the time of this reading, I failed to appreciate this book. But, many years later, reading it as someone already married for many years, it became the beautiful book I had been told it was at the time. I was not ready for this learning, and I couldn’t teach myself from it. It was, simply, lost on me. In all these cases, people learn, or not, as is their choice and sometimes, as noted, the learning, the self-teaching is a long time in the future. But, in any case, in all cases choices are made (“I will” or “I won’t” or “I might, maybe, who knows”). We do not pay attention, in our curriculum, to these fundamental realities. We act as if we are doing something but ignore this dimension of freedom: the freedom to choose to participate or not participate or participate to this measure and no more. This reality of the classroom, was it acknowledged, would change a great deal of our curriculum thinking, our teaching, and the place of the so-called learner. (See Dwayne Huebner’s essay “Curricular Language and Classroom Meanings” [1999], for an elaboration on the so-called learner.) Returning to the song, Wonka invites (“Come with me”). Now what happens, given that the learners have accepted the invitation? Wonka’s (the teacher’s) actions and suggestions are opportunities for the learner to teach her/himself by asking the learner to be constantly actively doing something, no matter that the teacher has suggested the actions. This is also a different viewpoint from the standard classroom (no matter how “liberatory” the classroom). In the usual classroom, we offer the learner all kinds of information and actions for learning what we want them to learn. There is always a desired endpoint of learning. What is Wonka’s “endpoint?” It is for each person to learn him/herself, to discover her/his own capacities and desires. And learning always occurs through action. A lot of “teaching” involves talking which involves listening. Listening is usually treated as passive. But listening is, and, for purposes of learning, must be understood as action. In fact, if listening is not taken as action, then listening does not occur. Then there is only noise in the room that remains noise and has no value. We so often teach as if our talking is valuable “stuff” to be taken in rather than something with which the learner actively grapples and thinks and tries to see what it has to do with her/his life and, thus, make it her/his own. For Wonka, every step of the way is for the guest (the learner) to come to know more and more about her/himself, her/his capacities, hopes, and commitments. It is to commit to her/his own imagination. Step one in learning pure imagination is: respond to the call of the teacher, do with the teacher, and take on the responsibility of acting for yourself, not for the teacher, not for anyone else. The teacher sets up some conditions but only you can encounter yourself. Let us say that Wonka has secured his learner’s commitment to themselves. What does he ask of them? He asks them to “take a look.” In the act of looking, he hopes they will “see.” Why make this distinction? How is “looking” different from “seeing?” “Looking” involves turning their eyes in a certain direction, paying attention. If they do this, then “look” becomes “see.” “See” implies understanding (“Ah, now I see”). What are they meant to “see” (understand): their own, individual imaginations. This suggests that they didn’t know they had imaginations. Wonka must help each of

138

6 Pure Imagination and Freedom

them introduce themselves to themselves. Nothing can happen if they don’t know they have selves and that those selves are selves of imagination. This is no small request, to see their own imaginations. In our very rational, “pragmatic” culture, imagination has little currency. We don’t value imagination. Most people write themselves out of the story of imagination which, so the culture teaches us, is the domain of the artist. Since we are taught that only a special, talented few can be artists we are, therefore, also not imaginative. But all human beings have imaginations, except few people in their lives have allowed themselves to consider themselves as having imaginations. Each student must be offered the opportunity to understand themselves in this way with no criteria for the quality of imagination. Why is Wonka’s turning his learners to their imaginations necessary to teach them that they have imaginations? A simple answer would be as already noted in other places in this book: Western culture is wedded, historically, to reason. The Greeks deployed reason to develop their systems of thought. The cultures of the Middle East gave the West ways of doing mathematics and the sciences the West did not possess. During the Middle Ages in Europe, the Christian Church used its own forms of logic to determine belief and faith. In “modern times,” science has arisen as an almost quasi-religious institution that demands our faith in it based on its salient use of reason to accomplish all that it has accomplished. Imagination, its culturally dialectical döppelganger, has no such status in the Western world. If anything, it is viewed with suspicion as being misleading and unfirm. It is not knowledge, only feelings. A more complex answer takes us to the masculinity of Western culture in which imagination is associated with the feminine. (See Chapter 9, “Reimagining Time” and an “Epistemicide” chapter [Blumenfeld-Jones, 2022] for more on this.) Given the dominance of reason and masculinity in Western culture, no wonder that imagination is marginalized. There is a dilemma with the emphasis on looking and seeing although it is not a poison pill. Wonka asks his learners to “look” and “see.” This emphasis on sight partakes of a gendered view of what it means to know. Sight, from Plato forward, is the favored mode of knowing. The culture is replete with phrases and words that emphasize sight as the way to true knowledge: “I see” meaning “I understand,” having an “insight” meaning having a deep understanding of something, “The light bulb went on” meaning you suddenly came to understand something, and so forth. These are all associated with reason. For most of the history of Western thought, only men can reason. Thus, a focus on looking and seeing privileges the masculine. However, research by Belenky et al. (1986) makes it clear that women do know and can reason but not through the sense of sight. They present a developmentalist scheme for a woman’s way of knowing which is situated in voice and hearing. Further, knowing through voice and hearing is knowing from within a communal setting as voice, speaking and hearing are always between two people. Now the emphasis is not on the lone knower (which is prevalent within this song as well) but on knowing from within a communal setting. Due to the emphasis on sight for knowing in Western culture, women are culturally positioned to “not know” because “sight” and lone knowing are not associated with women. While Wonka may ask his guests/learners to “look” and “see,” he could have easily asked them to “listen” and

Analysis of “Pure Imagination,” the Song

139

“hear” as analogs of looking and seeing. The learners could respond with, “I hear you” meaning I understand or ‘I get what you’re saying” also meaning understanding. There may be still other senses which could be privileged in the process of knowing, although sight and sound senses are the two that dominate. These issues are not fatal to the salience of “inviting” and “asking” to become involved with imagination or involved with something else. The point is this: in one way or another Wonka (the teacher) must first find a way to invite the involvement of the guests (the learners) in their own learning. Then Wonka, the teacher, must ask the guests/learners to bring themselves into contact with the object of knowing/living/being. Wonka (the teacher) is asking for an effort to be put forth by the learners and, thereby, through observation, the teacher knows that the learners have entered the project for themselves and themselves alone. There are linguistic features in this first stanza that will become notable once we move into the second stanza. First, Wonka addresses his guest/learners in the thirdperson pronoun: “you.” He refers to himself as “me.” He separates himself from his guests. This is their looking, seeing, not his looking, seeing. This separation is part of the securing of choice. In the second stanza, there is a shift from the “you” and “me” structure to a “we” structure. Second, the verbs in this first stanza signal a particular stance toward beginning an education in imagination. Wonka invites his guests/learners to “come” and “you’ll be.” That is, they are to begin by coming into their being. Being is sheer existence. This is further emphasis on choice. They must choose their existence before they can do anything. How often do we invite our learners to make the choice to come and be? Then there is the “look/see” call. While “look” is an action, the casting of the eyes toward something, looking is meaningless unless you move into a state of actually seeing, making sense, understanding. To “see” is more active and it is necessary from the beginning to invoke the active desire for understanding that is more than merely being aware of something (looking). Seeing requires an internal inquiry into their status as people who imagine. Third, he asks them to “see into your imagination.” “Into” provides a depth model of the self as he might have asked them to look at their imaginations which places them outside that state of being. “Into” is significant in its signal that there is depth here. Although the song doesn’t engage this question, this first stanza raises a question about the status of imagination in our curriculum thinking. I’ve already commented on the status of imagination in the Western world in a general way. As with our larger society, so with our curriculum thinking. We won’t find imagination present in it, except in the narrowest of scopes. What if, however, we thought of all knowledge as imaginative? What if imagination, as with mystery, is central to science, mathematics, history, all social knowings, daily life, and more? Then the curriculum as a response to our lives, would always be about imagination. If this were the case, what if we were to organize the curriculum as an imaginative exploration, a way of knowing in which the world reveals itself to us rather than us making something happen? This song, by not restricting imagination to any particular domain of human action, broadens it to a feature of all life, bringing our attention to the centrality of imagination in all that we do and/or think.

140

6 Pure Imagination and Freedom

Stanza 2—Experiencing an Imaginative World We’ll begin with a spin, Traveling in the world of my creation. What we’ll see will defy explanation. Now Wonka, using the “we” pronoun, is together with his guests/his learners in this adventure and, as we shall see, they will have this adventure directly due to his contributions. He tells them “We’ll begin with a spin.” They must take an action in company with him. Why is this? In this stanza he is introducing them to his vision of “pure imagination,” his specific construction of it and they will travel in his version of pure imagination. This is important. Imagination is never imagination of nothing, but always of something. It must have a physical presence. If you ask a scientist such as Richard Feynman about the origins of his imaginative exploration, he will tell you it began with something physical and mundane, in his case observing a Cornell University lunch plate flung in the air by a student which caught Feynman’s attention and imagination, out of which he spun questions which eventually led to his physics discoveries that gained him the Nobel prize (see Chapter 4 for more on Feynman). I imagine that even in his most abstract work, for him it has an undeniable physical presence that he can sense. As with Feynman, so with Wonka. And importantly, so with his guests/learners. They must have the opportunity to experience a physical manifestation of pure imagination. It will not be the final version of it but without a model, they will not be able to construct their own visions. This is profoundly true of all learning. We leverage our learning on the learning of another. Our presence as knowers within the context of others knowing is essential for someone to teach her/himself. We both represent knowing and show, by example, ways of knowing. Very traditional art teaching reveals this truth. In such teaching students are sent to museums to copy the Great Masters’ paintings. Michael Polyani, in his book The Tacit Dimension (1966), points out that such copying is not mere slavishness. Rather, the student, as Polyani describes it, slips his hand in the hand of the master as he or she copies, feels not just the actions of the strokes of the brush but the intention of the artist in making that stroke. In this, the student learns to think like the master. Such learning is not for the purpose of staying locked into that way of thinking and doing but learning the leverage one gains when one “thinks” (through the hand) in this way. Buber makes nearly the same point when he writes of education as beginning in standing on the shoulders of our community (see Chapter 5, freedom, for an elaboration of this point). Or, to make this point in a third way, Hans-Georg Gadamer taught us that, hermeneutically, we do not know something except we know something already. That is, there is no knowing that is entirely de novo. The responsibility of the teacher, in this regard, is enormous. So, Wonka’s students accompany him on a journey through his vision of pure imagination. Specifically, by communing with Wonka’s species of imagination the guests/learners become inspired to make their own efforts toward fashioning their own worlds of imagination. Their action is to experience in the footsteps of the

Analysis of “Pure Imagination,” the Song

141

master. There is, however, another dimension of journeying in the teacher’s version of a “world of pure imagination.” Not only do they experience under the guidance of Wonka, they, also, witness Wonka witnessing his own creation. In this witnessing, they begin to understand what it is Wonka does when he “sees” and “knows.” That is, to experience Wonka’s model of pure imagination is not sufficient. It cannot speak for itself. Someone must speak for it. Wonka, by interacting with his world, is showing them how they might experience the world of “pure imagination.” Again, as with all this teaching, it is not a mandate that they experience as Wonka does. The learners are not the teacher. Each of them is her or himself. But by witnessing Wonka witnessing, they can begin to understand what it means to have an entry point into this world. They can begin to understand what it means to choose what to view first and second and third and so forth. They might make different choices, but they will witness the act of making choices. Imagination, then, is also a matter of making choices. How will they know that they are, in fact, being successful in contacting their imaginations through their journey with Wonka? It will not be a matter of being able to explain what they are witnessing since Wonka tells them that what they experience “will defy explanation.” This is central to imagination: only when the world becomes something beyond explanation (beyond words that encapsulate and capture that world) will they know they have something of worth. James B. Macdonald spoke to the problem of explanation in his “Theory, Practice, and the Hermeneutic Circle” (1981/1995), in which he introduced hermeneutics to Curriculum Studies. Macdonald distinguished between explaining and understanding. Explaining is making flat (turning into a geometric plane), removing dimensionality. Understanding is allowing for the depth of something to be witnessed. Experiencing something that “defies explanation,” defies flattening, defies control of the situation. Defies control. That is the whole point of imagination: it transcends what we have controlled. It escapes the boundaries we have made to rein in the world. Buber provides some images of this in his discussion of what he terms the “free school” of teaching (1947/2002). He contrasts a traditional drawing class with what he calls a “free school” approach. In the traditional class “The teacher of the ‘compulsory’ school of thought began with rules and current patterns. Now you knew what beauty was, and you had to copy it, and it was copied either in apathy or in despair” (pp. 105–106). The teacher of the free school, on the other hand, does not instruct by having the learners conform to his/her pre-determined rules. Rather, The teacher of the “free” school places on the table a twig of broom, say, in an earthenware jug, and makes the pupils draw it. Or he [sic] places it on the table, tells the pupils to look at it, removes it, and then makes them draw it. If the pupils are quite unsophisticated soon not a single drawing will look like another. Now the delicate, almost imperceptible and yet important influence begins – that of criticism and instruction. The children encounter a scale of values that, however unacademic it may be, is quite constant, a knowledge of good and evil that, however, individualistic it may be, is quite unambiguous. The more unacademic this scale of values, and the more individualistic this knowledge, the more deeply do the children experience the encounter. In the former instance the preliminary declaration of what alone was made for resignation or rebellion; but in the latter, where the pupil gains the realization only after he has ventured far out on the way to his achievement, his heart is drawn to reverence for the form, and educated. (p. 106)

142

6 Pure Imagination and Freedom

In this image, there is a model: the twig of broom and the vase. There is a joining with each other around the model and each person does with the model what s/he desires and “sees.” Thus, begins the education: “that of criticism and instruction. The children encounter a scale of values … quite unambiguous. The more unacademic this scale … the more individualistic this knowledge … the more deeply do the children experience the encounter.” The teacher provides a scale of values but if that scale is unacademic and is, rather, “individualistic,” so the children enter deeply into the experience each for her/himself. In this encounter, the child is not encountering the twig of broom and vase but her/himself. The teacher is modeling how to encounter without demanding a particular encounter. Thus, the learner is “drawn to reverence for the form, and educated.” Drawn to reverence for the form. Notice that the learner is taken out of her/himself as s/he becomes devoted to the form. The form does not overwhelm the learner and replace the learner. The form becomes the leverage whereby, in going out to the form (the sprig of broom and the vase), s/he simultaneously goes inside her/his life and being. There is a vibration here between that which is outside (the form) and that which is inside (finding the inside by going out to the form). Buber tells us this as he describes the result of going out to a form and inward to her/himself: “The world engenders the person in the individual. The world, that is the whole environment, nature and society, ‘educates’ the human being; it draws out his powers, and makes him grasp and penetrate its objections” (p. 107). Notice the vibration here. The learner becomes a person (inside) in the process of going out to the world. This “going out to the world” requires the individual to find her/his powers in order to understand the outer world. In finding her/his powers s/he “grasp[s] and penetrate[s] the world.” What is the role of the teacher in this situation? To begin the process of education the teacher makes “a selection … from the effective world … give[s] decisive effective power to a selection of the world … concentrated and manifested in the educator” (p. 106). That is, prior to meeting the learners, the teacher selects the model (world of pure imagination, a sprig of broom and vase) that best represents what the teacher wants the learners to encounter and, therefrom, learn. The teacher does this through her/his own being. The selection is never arbitrary. That initial selection, even if random, posits and teaches the relationship between randomness and pattern, thus an “effective selection.” Buber tells us that the teacher functions by standing to the side and coming forward when the learner feels the need to call on the teacher to guide or suggest something (“the raising of a finger, perhaps, or the questioning glance, is the other half of what happens in education” p. 107). In this part of the curriculum, the teaching comes after the encounter, rather than leading the encounter. This structure, according to Buber, creates a deeper encounter with the world. There are ironies here. I have written of the learner teaching her/himself. I have written of the teacher standing to the side until called. I have written on the desirability of Wonka accompanying his learners during their exploration of his world of pure imagination, witnessing him witnessing as well as he guiding them through that world and some particular way. All of this is “true.” When I wrote that only the so-called learner teaches her/himself, this remains true. The “teacher” (Wonka, the free-school

Analysis of “Pure Imagination,” the Song

143

teachers) provides the opportunities for the learner to engage but it is up to the learner to engage in her/his own way that will provide her/him with an emergent knowing. The official teacher (Wonka, the free-school teacher) engages with the learner when called upon and provides the initial prompt for engagement. There is a delicate dance between teacher-provided prompt, learner engagement with her/himself, engagement with the prompt, seeking of guidance from the teacher who provides guidance that furthers the learners teaching her/himself more about her/his status as a being in the world. In the case of this song, that status is a knower/practitioner of pure imagination.

Stanza 3—Forming Your Own Imaginative World If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it. Anything you want to, do it. Want to change the world? There’s nothing to it. Having experienced a model, it is the learners’ turn to act and use their imaginations. Here Wonka (the teacher) presents possibilities they might desire: paradise, anything you want (read: can conceptualize), changing the world. In each case they must determine how to make this happen. How do they do this? They “simply look around,” simply “do it.” Stanza three completes the curricular structures for education in pure imagination: look and see, experience a model, then act. This idea of “simply look around” is redolent of another Eastern spiritual teaching. The great sage Muktananda taught that most people think there is a path to enlightenment. This thinking, he taught us, is incorrect. We are already enlightened. All we need to do is turn around and see it. Since we don’t do that, we start down a path instead. While there is no pretense to be performing Eastern spiritual teaching, the similarity between Muktananda’s teaching and this song’s teaching seem striking. It is possible the song may be teaching how to craft a new self and a new life. At the same time, there is something fiercely difficult in achieving this life of pure imagination. The lyrics indicate this as well. Wonka has placed his guests on their own. There are so many ways to be “on your own.” Each “way” must be offered to the right person in the right way. There is yet another story from the East, that emphasizes this. The story goes that there was a Master and his many students. One day, a person arrived, asking to become a student of the Master. The Master said no, but if he wanted, he could go to the kitchen and see what help they wanted. The person accepted and worked in the kitchen. He washed the dishes at the river every day, for days, and weeks, and months. At last, he thought he was ready to become a student of the Master. He approached the Master about becoming a student. The Master again said “No” but, if he would like, he could go back to the kitchen and see what they had for him to do. Once again, disappointed, he went to the kitchen. Once again for days, for weeks, for months he washed the dishes by the river. After a long period of time, he returned to the Master and, once again, asked to become a student of the Master. Once again, the Master said no but

144

6 Pure Imagination and Freedom

if he wished he could return to the kitchen. The man returned to the kitchen and resumed his work washing the dishes. This happened over and over. One day the man once again went to the Master and asked to become his student. This time the Master answered as follows: “There is no need to study with me. You have become Enlightened. Go into the world and do what you should be doing.” And the man left. Upon his departure, the Master’s students, some of whom had been studying with him for many years, complained, “We have studied with you for many years and not one of us has achieved Enlightenment. All this person did was to wash dishes. How can this be?!” The Master replied, “Each person has his own path. That was his. This is yours. Now quiet down and return to your studies.” Each person has his or her own path to learning, to pure imagination. There may be many similarities between paths but there are, in the end, because each person is individual, a unique path for each person. The question is: how do we get out of the way of learning, out of the way of impeding the progress of the learner and, yet be helpful in whatever way seems right? That is what Buber is trying to describe in his discussion of traditional education and free-school education. In the case of the song, the suggestions offered to the learners are specific and conscious. The teacher suggests that the learners might want to “view paradise.” The learners might want to let their imaginations loose and imagine anything at all, no matter how far-fetched. Lastly, the learners might want to consider changing the world. Look at the order of these challenges. First, view a model of the best possible world: paradise. Then, consider any action that might, thinking of viewing paradise, fulfill the image of paradise in your own mind. Lastly, consider transforming the world, perhaps in the image of paradise and actions that could fulfill your image of paradise. And don’t just image them: “do it.” At this point, I imagine the reader is disconcerted. The worst kind of racist could imagine a world only of white people with people of non-white races entirely eradicated. Recall, however, that Wonka’s suggestions are based on the model the learners have just experienced. Willy Wonka’s particular world in his factory, the teacher’s world, is a world of goodness and love, of various creatures getting along, of working hard to produce goodness and love. It is a world of gentleness. So, the model is never far from mind since this is the environment in which the learners are learning. Again, however, you may justifiably worry: everything depends on the model presented. This model is one thing. But the ideal model worlds of the racist or Anti-Semite or misogynist are entirely different and unacceptable. Here I have two responses to these legitimate concerns. First, thinking on Chapter 4, “Wild Imagination,” and Chapter 9, “Reimagining Time,” imagination is used not to confirm what we already know and desire, but questions those models. Everything becomes open to dialectical unlearning which is part of the heart of this mosaic. Everything is challenged. That is central to the practice of imagination. Even in Willy Wonka’s world, he expects and knows he will be challenged (and he is). In some cases, the challenge is a misuse of his model. But in Charlie’s case (Charlie who comes from an economically very poor home and is the hero of the book and film), the challenge is to make the promise of the model manifest in the everyday world outside the model. The genius of the original novel by Roald Dahl is precisely that challenge to have our ideals lived in

Analysis of “Pure Imagination,” the Song

145

our real world. Second, simply because someone might misuse ideas, such as those presented here, that seem to completely subvert the intention of the ideas, does not delegitimate those ideas. Such misuses will always occur. We can do our best to keep those ideas within what was originally meant. But, our task, as I am trying to show in this chapter, is to understand that education is not a matter of training people to act thus and so but, rather, helping people challenge and question what they think they know and not trust to the surety of their pre-conceived notions and taken-for-granted positions, no matter those positions. If someone chooses misuse, it is our task to educate them toward the kinds of uses outlined in this book: to educate for skepticism about themselves, to educate toward an open fluidity of thought and intersections with other, different perspectives. In short, to enter into an education of dialogue as presented in Chapter 5 (“Freedom All Too Human”). This moves us to the last stanza and movement in the education of pure imagination.

Stanza 4—A Paean to Pure Imagination: The Master Speaks of His Life There is no life I know To compare with pure imagination. Living there you’ll be free, If you truly wish to be. The students have looked, seen, witnessed, and acted. It is time for the teacher to tell the learners something of his relationship to pure imagination. Wonka’s (the teacher’s) tellings are contemplative in character: knowing, comparing, wishing. Action is replaced by standing back to think about what you have experienced. In this case, Wonka wants to share how he feels about this world of pure imagination. He feels as follows. Pure imagination is the most desirable state he could live: “there is no life to compare” to it. You can feel his love for it. Curricularly, do we communicate our complete dedication to what we teach? Should we do so while being careful to not overwhelm others in such a way as to make it seem that you cannot pursue, in this case pure imagination, without such passion? Do we make this part of the curriculum? Wonka tells his guests/learners that they, too, can live this life. But he also tells them that to live this life is not simple. You can only live this life, if, and only if, you wish to be free. And not just wish to be free but “truly wish” to be free. What is it to “truly wish”? There is no guidance as to how we will know we “truly wish” this. But “truly wish” it we must. We can, and probably should, debate what constitutes “truly wish.” We should throw ourselves whole-heartedly into the fray of imagining without boundaries. Clearly, we have a great deal of work to do to bring about the re-centering of our education. The term “re-centering” harkens back to James Macdonald’s iconic essay, “A Transcendental Developmental Ideology of Education” (Macdonald, 1974/1995)

146

6 Pure Imagination and Freedom

in which he features M. C. Richards’ idea of centering yourself in the world (Richards, 1989). In her work, she uses throwing a pot on the pottery wheel as the image of centering yourself in the world through the act of centering the clay. Macdonald takes this idea as what must happen next in education, a transcending of the standard ideologies toward a transcendental understanding of being human. So, too, in a sense, this song presents that possibility through acts of imagination that are not tethered to ideologies that already direct the outcomes of imagination in particular directions.

The Ontology of Pure Imagination Ontology references our existence (as opposed to what we know). The song plays with ontology, most especially apparent in the last stanza. Its perhaps most significant contribution is its fostering thinking about a curriculum that is not merely a way of learning to do something but, rather, being a person who can imagine. How does the song play with ontology? The song provides, throughout most of the song, a geography, a solid place for imagination to exist. That place, that geography is “a world of pure imagination.” In the song we travel through Wonka’s world of pure imagination (“traveling in the world of my creation”). The third stanza concretizes materializing the world as, potentially, a place of paradise and change. But the last stanza suddenly shifts from place to life: “There is no life I know/That compares to pure imagination.” Now pure imagination is understood not as a place but as a life. What are we to know from this? Pure imagination exists wherever you exist. It does not need a specific set of physical circumstances in order to be lived. It is not a place. It is a state of being, an ontological state. Pure imagination transforms the world you are in by transforming you rather than being a place to which you can escape or a place that is necessary for you to live the life of pure imagination. Wonka is suggesting that unless you cultivate this interior state of pure imagination, you cannot transform the world in which you live. In curriculum we spend little energy in considering this ontological state. Rather, we focus on knowing something (knowledge-based orientation) or learning how to know what we need to know in order to accommodate the world we find (social reproduction orientation) or changing the world for the better, socially, and politically (the social reconstruction orientation). No doubt, for this last orientation, imagination is sometimes invoked as a necessary component of changing the world. But, as is discussed in Chapter 4, this form of imagination (radical imagination) is a servant to other ends rather than the state which might reveal dimensions of our world hitherto invisible to us. In this light it appears to be a debased form of imagination. Of all the orientations, the person-centered orientation comes the closest to Wonka’s approach to imagination, but it is so fixed upon a non-directed curriculum of individual doing whatever s/he desires that Wonka’s carefully constructed guidance has no presence (see Chapter 5 for more on these orientations). Wonka’s ontological orientation is not about changing a physical and/or social situation in order to live the life of pure

The Ontology of Pure Imagination

147

imagination. Ontology is about the living of this life, no matter where it occurs. It is about states of being, not states of doing. In the end, Wonka does return to a geography: “Living there you’ll be free.” But this brief substitution of life for place raises the question: is pure imagination a life to be lived or a place to be, or both in dialectical relationship? Pure imagination appears to be complex. It is not easy to fulfill for in order to achieve pure imagination you must “truly wish” without Wonka ever telling us what it means to “truly wish.” Pure imagination becomes dialectical: it is both a place and not a place (a life lived anyplace). In this dialectic, Wonka shows that the whole project is not a simple cookbook. It suggests that many places could be sites of pure imagination. In contrast, in education and curriculum there is a great deal of emphasis on having the right conditions in order to succeed. But, what if the “conditions” are inner resources? This is not to say that children don’t need a decent place to learn and materials and a community that can support them with physically nice homes and good food, but it does say that these are no guarantors of success. The inner life, the beingness, that is what may be at least equally central. Few, if any curricula, address this ontological perspective. Further, being (or knowing who you are) is not a state accomplished in isolation. In this song, there are varying sets of relationships between the teacher and the students. Once again turning to Buber, he provides a sort of typology of relationships that can help center these curricular structures. Buber proposes that there are three relations between teacher and learner: teacher/pupil, educator/pupil, and friend. The teacher/pupil relationship is the most ancient. There was a teacher, a philosopher or a coppersmith, whose journeymen and apprentices lived with him and learned, by being allowed to share in it, what he had to teach them of his handwork or brainwork. But they also learned, without either their or his being concerned with it, they learned, without noticing that they did, the mystery of personal life: they received the spirit. (p. 106)

This seems very similar to Willy Wonka’s pedagogy. A person learned by doing the work guided by the teacher. But notice what else is learned: “the mystery of personal life: they received the spirit.” What does Buber mean by “the spirit?” He means that the apprentices learned how “to be” fully in the world with others at many levels. They were not just learning a job. They were learning how “to be.” Of course, historically this may have been rare but since it was the only form of education, it served better than we might imagine. For Buber it has devolved into the educator/pupil relationship. Now the teacher is the “old” educator: “‘the man with a will to power’ … the bearer of assured values which were strong in tradition. If the educator represents the world to the pupil, the ‘old’ educator represented particularly the historical world, the past.” Such an educator “was the ambassador of history to this intruder, the ‘child’: he carried to him … the magic of the spiritual forces of history; he instilled values into the child or he drew the child into the values” (p. 110). Buber was concerned that this situation could be “easily used, or misused, by the individual’s will to power,

148

6 Pure Imagination and Freedom

for this will is inflated by the authority of history” (p. 111). What is lost is the “magical validity of tradition” (p. 111). This connects to Chapter 5 (“Freedom All Too Human”) in which Buber insists on destiny as one of the three elements of our communion. We commune with our tradition in a way that affords a path forward. That he names it “magical” only adds to its importance. And, just as the “Willy Wonka” film and the Dahl novel provide access to a magical place, so, too, it is not too much to imagine that tradition has value. The educator that Buber seeks is a person of humility. The teacher enters the room and is confronted by a multitude of different beings and “accepts and receives them all” (p. 112). The educator will be guided by the recognition of values which is in his [sic] glance as an educator … under constant correction by the special humility of the educator for whom the life and particular being of all his pupils is the decisive factor to which his ‘hierarchic’ recognition is subordinated. (p. 112)

This idea of humility, which also plays out in the experience of freedom, is central to imagination as well. For, in imagination, if you are not humble before its play, then you are likely to overwhelm it and direct it inauthentically. In this song, there is a constant sweetness and humility to the teacher which he hopes to impart to the learners. We can be firm in our teaching but if we ever forget that we are not teaching for ourselves nor for history nor for society but, rather, for the unfolding beingness of our learners, then we do succumb to that “will to power” about which Buber expresses such concern. Now we return to being, which is so important to freedom as well. Why emphasize being? Notice, even at the beginning of the song, Wonka invokes a state of being over place: “Come with me and you’ll be/In the world of pure imagination.” So much of the contemporary curriculum is focused on knowledge gaining and manipulation and on creating a world of some sort. But the emphasis upon being (without sacrificing knowing and living ethically) is given little attention in most curriculum thinking. But, more than this, in Chapter 5 on freedom, especially, but also in the chapters dealing with imagination in various manifestations, states of being are the privileged focus. And not merely states of being for their own sake but, rather, for the sake of that better world, for the sake of that state of communion with another person which is the basis for that better world. So, the usually discrete categories of epistemology, ontology, and axiology (divided into its twinned partners of aesthetics and ethics) are now drawn together under the focus of imagination which, as we can see in Chapter 5 (“Freedom All Too Human”) and Chapter 4 (“Wild Imagination”), requires imagination as the basis for achieving this synthesis. All of this suggests that the call to enter into a world of pure imagination, which is a world of freedom, requires no longer being able to know the purity of the world as an individual’s world alone. We are never alone. It is to enter into a world that raises questions, that asks of us to lose our surety and understand that imagination produces a world with others that is always changing and is subject, repeatedly to the fundamental question, “What does it mean to ‘truly wish to be free’?”

References

149

References Belenky, M. F., Clinchy, B. M., Goldberger, N. R., & Tarule, J. M. (1986). Women’s ways of knowing: The development of self, voice, and mind. Basic Books. Bohm. D., & Peat, F. D. (1987). Science, order, and creativity: A dramatic new look at the creative roots of science and life. NYC: Bantam. Briscusse, L., & Newley, A. (1971). Pure imagination from the film Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory. Buber, M. (1923/1958). I and Thou (R. G. Smith, Trans., 2nd ed.). Scribners. Buber, M. (1947/2002). Education. In Between man and man (R. G. Smith, Trans., pp. 98–122). Routledge. Dahl, R. (1964). Charlie and the chocolate factory. Alfred A. Knopf. Ford, M. F. (2012). The good soldier. Digireads.com (E-book). Gallagher, S. (1992). Hermeneutics and education. SUNY Press. Huebner, D. (1999) Curricular language and classroom meanings. In V. Hillis & W. F. Pinar (Eds.), The lure of the transcendent: Collected essays of Dwayne E. Huebner (pp. 101–117). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Macdonald, J. B. (1974/1995). Transcendental, developmental ideology of education. In B. J. Macdonald (Ed.), Theory as a prayerful act: The collected essays of James B. Macdonald (pp. 69–98). Peter Lang. Macdonald, J. B. (1981/1995). Theory, practice and the hermeneutic circle. In B. J. Macdonald (Ed.), Theory as a prayerful act: The collected essays of James B. Macdonald (pp. 173–186). Peter Lang. Ortner, S. (1973). On key symbols. American Anthropologist, 75, 1338–1346. Polyani, M. (1966). The tacit dimension. Doubleday. Richards, M. C. (1989). Centering in pottery, poetry, and the person. Wesleyan University Press.

Chapter 7

Creativity and Aesthetic Consciousness in Teacher Education

Abstract This chapter begins with an examination of the relationship between aesthetic consciousness and creativity. This is followed by the ways in which it can be leveraged to open up curriculum and teacher education to reveal the hidden potential of new ways of unlearning ourselves and reconstructing our possibilities as teachers and as human beings. Numerous examples of using creativity practices are presented as ways of fostering expanded understanding of self and subject matter. Keywords Embodiment · Embodied imagination · Aesthetics · Ethical consciousness · Curriculum studies · Dialectics · Teacher education

Prologue: Embodiment and Aesthetic Consciousness This chapter addresses how to foster imagination and creativity in curriculum thinking. It functions in parallel with “Pure Imagination” chapter as a different pedagogical way of fostering imagination without placing limits on what is imagined. Unlike the other chapter, this chapter does not propose a curricular structure for moving in the direction of leveraging aesthetic, imaginative thinking. Rather, it contains expressions of how “aesthetic consciousness” concepts can inform already existing practices. The presented practices are only examples rather than an exhaustive presentation of practices. Additionally, the practices described are supported by theoretical “thinking,” neither of which can be separated from the other. Lastly, the examples in this chapter are designed to enable individuals to confront themselves, to discern their ways of thinking about curriculum that could not have been revealed except through this means of unlearning, attempting to side-step our intellectual predilection to control what we think and what we know. Embodiment has been a constant theme of the work in this book. In Chapter 3 (“Dialectical Processes and Freedom”), unlearning was presented through my own unlearning in order to dance. It would be a mistake to think that this was only a personal example. Our knowing the world has a substantial bodily component in which we feel the world as well as think the world. These feelings (which are featured in Chapter 4, “Wild Imagination and the Critical Project”) are key to our knowing. This is not only because the brain is a physical component of the body, nor just © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 D. S. Blumenfeld-Jones, Reimagining Curriculum Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9877-4_7

151

152

7 Creativity and Aesthetic Consciousness in Teacher Education

because mind is distributed throughout our bodies. We respond to the world through our bodies, and it is that response which frequently gives the gravitas we seek to the unfolding ideas we have. Lived experience has been a constantly emphasized component of this book. Such experience is not merely intellectual but is always robustly bodily. Blumenfeld-Jones, when doing her work in the Berenty, Madagascar forest (as discussed in Chapter 4 “Wild Imagination and the Critical Project”), feels the trees, as she looks through the trees and understory in silent communion with them. I have been fortunate enough to witness this in person. Even now, at home, working on her data (the maps of the forest as documents of how the forest has changed) she reenters the forest, lives in the forest through the maps and “sees” the trees, the brush, the lemurs, feels that life, doesn’t just think it. Feynman, in his tale of his fascination with the plate whirling (also discussed in Chapter 4) wasn’t just telling about some distanced clinical event. He felt the plate spinning, felt the different speeds, wondered about the physics of this event. First, he saw and felt, then he “thought.” If it is the case that we know in these ways described above, then what are the ways in which that knowing can be curricularly leveraged in the work of curriculum making, curriculum deliberation, and curriculum scholarship? In this chapter I share some of the events I have provided for my students to bring them into a greater understanding of themselves, not through intellectual interrogation but through actions that bring them into the bodily/physical world as a starting place for knowing. The chapter begins with discussing aesthetic consciousness. It parallels the “aesthetic consciousness” discussion in Chapter 8 (“Reimagining Identity”) but provides some additional ideas about such consciousness. Why such an emphasis on aesthetic consciousness in this and other chapters? This is because aesthetic consciousness is core to the whole thesis of this book. Without it, how can we deploy imagination? Aesthetic consciousness is not only a possession of the artist but is that which, in part, allows for the other side of the “two cultures” (Snow, 1993) to function in creative ways. The behaviors of Kathryn Blumenfeld-Jones and Richard Feynman recounted in Chapter 4 are presented with the understanding that they encountered the world in a bodily/emotional/intuitive manner that was not about logical thinking. Perhaps logical thinking followed, but their different projects did not start with logical thinking. In fact, they started with being perplexed by something that they noticed through their bodies, not through some intellectual parsing. This is not to dismiss intellectual parsing, but it is to insist that sometimes we must live through other modalities to reveal something of potential value and the “something” is available in no other way.

Introduction: Contemporary Society and Aesthetics I used to live around the corner from a neighborhood elementary school. One year the school instituted a skills building program. On a weekly basis they displayed, on their signboard, a “skill of the week” which the whole school was to promote. These were

Introduction: Contemporary Society and Aesthetics

153

themes such as “care,” “courage,” and, one week, most intriguingly “curiosity.” Aside from the fact that “care” and “courage” aren’t skills but virtues (although they might be skillfully displayed) the last of these, “curiosity,” was perplexing. Is “curiosity” a skill or is it a disposition? It is most dismaying that the school felt the need to focus on developing this disposition in their learners for it seemed obvious that children have curiosity in abundance: they are always asking questions about everything upon which their attention alights. Thus, there was a tacit admission, by the school people, that somehow the children had forgotten this natural proclivity and were no longer employing it. Thus, they needed to be taught to be curious. What can be said of the need to teach people to be curious (again) can be similarly said of “creativity.” People are born with the capacity to be “creative” but seem to have come to believe that they are not. This is unfortunate for it is my contention that people are already at least nascently creative and it is my further contention that only through acts of creativity can certain important human capacities be developed for the benefit of the individual and of society. While I have had this stance during all my adult career as a dancer, it is the thinking of James B. Macdonald which galvanized it for me. In his later work he focused on creativity as a prime mode of learning (“A Transcendental Developmental Ideology of Curriculum” 1974/1995) offering the idea of “centering” as the most future-oriented idea for education. He wrote that centering “calls for the completion of the person or the creation of meaning that utilizes all the potential given to each person” (p. 87). He explored what kinds of activities could provide an opening up of perceptual experience, could facilitate sensitizing people to others, could develop close-knit community relations as well as facilitate the development of patterned meaning structures and enlarge human potential through meaning. I will be discussing, in this essay, a way toward these developments and facilitations situated in the practice of “creativity” and a focus upon cultivating aesthetic consciousness (See Chapter 8, “Reimagining Identity” for more on this.) Please note the inclusion of close-knit community relations and the sensitization of people to others. These two dimensions constitute the basis for building an ethical world. It is not surprising that Macdonald would link aesthetics (patterned meaning-making) and ethics (community building) as this connection is at least as old as the Greek philosophical tradition as the Greeks linked aesthetics and ethics under the term “axiology.” They understood them as partner dimensions of one phenomenon: beauty and goodness conjoined. In more contemporary settings we have come to understand that a sensitized aesthetic sense aids us in making moral decisions. (See Gadamer, 1975; Johnson, 1993.) Thus, cultivating aesthetic consciousness contributes to cultivating an ethical consciousness. That creativity, aesthetic consciousness, and ethical cultivation aren’t obvious tasks of the educator (aren’t simply taken for granted as being of value and as being embodied by every person) has a long history and is a part of our deep cultural milieu. In order to explore issues of cultivation I will be discussing my own teaching in teacher preparation and curriculum studies programs, but before beginning these descriptions and discussions I must situate you vis á vis aesthetic consciousness and issues of creativity. Having done this, I will present my approach to utilizing art experiences in educating preservice teaching students and classroom teachers in the ways of curriculum.

154

7 Creativity and Aesthetic Consciousness in Teacher Education

Aesthetic Consciousness and Creativity The notion of “aesthetic consciousness” is conventionally (these days) connected with the arts. While in my own teaching I do use the arts as the basis for the development of aesthetic consciousness, it should be understood from the outset that the arts are not synonymous with such consciousness. John Dewey (1934) made a great effort to make the case that we can live aesthetically in many situations that have nothing to do with art. For purposes of this discussion, the kinds of experiences in the arts I will describe can provide a direct means of developing aesthetic consciousness without subscribing to our cultural reasoning which uni-directionally connects “being creative” and having aesthetic consciousness with “talent” in the arts. We, in fact, do not have to possess artistic talent to benefit from the experience of making art. Ironically, however, to benefit from such experiences you must take the experience seriously as if you were working toward a life in the arts. This will be elaborated in my description of my work with pre-service teachers and masters’ students who are already certified teachers. This is further demonstration of dialectics informing both thought and action. The term aesthetics derives from the Greek and means “sense perception or sensation.” Immediately it is clear that we all have sense perception and sensations. Aesthetic consciousness, in its most basic guise, is an awareness of, focus upon and exercise of judgment about our senses as a human capacity that connects us to the world around us directly and carries information and value for us as a dimension of our humanness. Certainly, if education is about the cultivation of our humanness, it would be about, in part, the cultivation of sensation and our sensitive employment of it as part of our humanness. It may be curious to think about cultivating the senses. If we all have them and they are our basic connection to all around us, why would they need cultivation? There are at least two possible answers to this question. First, our culture has tended to excise the senses from our consciousness as having any value, favoring the mind dominating the body. Perhaps most famously, Descartes’ now infamous assertion (“Cogito ergo sum”—“I think, therefore I am”) privileges the mind over all physical reality as Descartes seeks the one fact that he cannot doubt: there is a self who is thinking. This self is apart from all material experience including the body and the senses. For Descartes, the problem with material experience and the senses: they can deceive us. Only the fact that I am thinking is non-deceptive and thinking is, therefore, the only venue for finding out the truth. All else is potentially false, unreal, and non-trustworthy. While Descartes may have expressed this, he did not invent the notion; that distinction belongs in the West to the Greeks, especially Plato. For Plato, truth is only that which doesn’t change. Since the senses bring this ever-changing material reality to us, the senses are infected by the changing material reality. Therefore, they are untrustworthy for knowing the truth. What is a person to do? It is only this: discover the unchanging essences that underlie all this changeable experience through using your mind and reason. Using reason, you will come upon correct ideas. These are the only things that are real (because correct ideas are unchanging). As an example, there are all kinds of chairs in the world

Aesthetic Consciousness and Creativity

155

but what they all share is “chairness” (the idea of chair). Otherwise, we would not know to call all of them chairs. Through our mind we can discover the essence of “chair,” the pure form which can’t exist in the real world but only in the world of ideas. To bypass the error-filled dispositions of bodily experience, experience must be distilled, purified, and made “true” through correct thought, cleansing it of the contamination of the sensual or emotional. The truth is “true” because I have used the correct mental processes for achieving correct ideas about “reality.” You can see, by this recounting, why the arts, deeply material and sensual, are often marginalized in our society and in our schools. In the face of this history, to even begin to consider valuing the cultivation of our senses, we must alter our relationship to our senses. We must begin to trust our senses as locations of knowledge, not merely conduits of data upon which the mind might work in order to have knowledge. We must see, for instance, that while we usually associate mind with our physical brain and, thus, our mind is in that organ, our bodies are filled with the nervous system. It could be said that we can “think” in our leg or arm or lower back because the mind is there as well. Our bodies are our “minds,” not merely our brain is our mind. This requires a re-orientation toward what constitutes mind. To credit the value of aesthetic consciousness, the privileging of mind over body must be reversed and body must become a trusted partner in knowing. How does “aesthetics” fit in this conversation? With aesthetics we run into a parallel difficulty with the mind/body split. As asserted earlier, aesthetics is conventionally connected with the arts and most people see themselves as separate from the arts and from making art. Generally speaking, people do not see that aesthetics, beauty, and sensation fill their lives. For instance, to the degree that people pay attention to personal style in clothing, housing, furnishings, food, etc. and attend to ways of being with others, to that degree they can be said to be concerned with beauty, sensation, and sensual awareness. They are “living aesthetically.” Yet most people don’t see this. Why? Because we have the idea of the “fine arts” as a distinctive cultural product produced by professional artists. The “fine arts” are defined by their not having a function (aside from beauty), thus any focus upon function takes other aesthetic activities out of the art realm. For instance, clothing, furnishings, and food all have function, therefore, they have nothing to do with art. Further, today people make their aesthetic choices (about clothing, music, food, etc.) with a consumerist consciousness, connecting beauty and sensation with buying the right food, clothing, makeup, movies, music, books, and so forth, to feel as if they are living the beautiful life, leading to improving their chances at success in life. These choices establish public identities that connect them to a particular community and distinguish them from other communities. All this aesthetic activity and, yet not art. Why? The art community tends to see such consumerism as crass and anti-art. The Museum of Modern Art in NYC does have a design collection that celebrates the beauty of commercial artifacts, but this celebration is always a matter of the objects being separated from their original impetus (making something that would attract and, therefore, sell) in order to be seen as just objects of art. Consumer objects can never be art if seen as consumer objects.

156

7 Creativity and Aesthetic Consciousness in Teacher Education

Therefore, those who make such objects are not artists and we, who purchase such objects, are not involved in an artistic collection endeavor. This brings us to the last link in this chain of separation from daily life. Real art is not merely “art” but, rather, is high art. Herbert Gans (1974), the sociologist, made a distinction between high art and popular art. High art is part of what Raymond Williams termed the “selective tradition” (Williams, 1973) which selects some art as icons representing good taste. To appreciate such art is to show oneself to have good taste and to belong in the upper social circles. To appreciate it is to potentially belong in the power centers of society. We notice that those who attend symphonies, theater, museums, and so forth, filling their lives with socially sanctioned beauty, are the people who also have the most material resources who regularly donate to such institutions and sit on their boards. Ironically, these people do not, necessarily, always like “high art,” but they participate because being seen with high art provides social leverage and status. The rest of society lives on the other side of culture in Gans’ “popular culture” world. Those who value country-western music, television game shows, soap opera, MTV, hip-hop culture, rock-and-roll, and the like and who purchase paintings of dogs playing cards, of bucolic fields, of clowns and of doe-eyed children are not involved with art, and, therefore, are disconnected from art and, by extension, from aesthetic consciousness and creativity. As a society, we tend to accept these distinctions as correct. Pierre Bourdieu in Distinction (1984) explicitly laid out this terrain as he explored the different social classes’ view of what it means to have “good taste.” He ably showed the social structures that resulted in the working-class membership viewing itself as having no aesthetic taste but enjoying its lack since the “having of social taste” was onerous. The selective tradition which performs this labeling is found in school curricula which maintain and nurture the high/low culture distinction and all the privileges that connect with being able to appreciate and participate in high art. Concurrently popular culture is seen as dangerous and in need of being eliminated from school experience (see Chapter 8 “Identity, Self, and Liberation” for more on this). In this way most people are cut off from aesthetic consciousness and creativity in their lives; they are disconnected from art. As with the mind/body split, we must recalibrate our thinking to find aesthetics in everything and that we can think about our everyday lives in artist’s terms without being apologetic. The above discussion about the aesthetics/art intersection points toward the arts in our lives: the arts and our aesthetic choices are both centered on the making of meaning. Thinking, living aesthetically, and choosing what clothing to wear are all moves made to find, create, and develop a meaningful life as it may be, simultaneously, a socially acceptable life that fits with some community. That is, when we encounter art, in any of its forms (even those not considered to be “art”) we are seeking our own meaning of ourselves with the art encounter as the vehicle for coming to self-meaning as well as social meaning. Hans-Georg Gadamer (1975), in his work on hermeneutics (the study of how we make meaning through our encounters with objects and events in the world), taught us this about the arts as he focused his attention, initially, on the act of play (both play in general and being an actor in a play) and experiencing pieces of art as the two venues in which we might understand how we construct self-meaning and a meaningful life. Gadamer describes the act of

Aesthetic Consciousness and Creativity

157

play and being in a play as displacing yourself into another state of mind and a role in life, experimenting with being other than who you are at the moment. We all know that play is “just play,” not permanent and not real in the usual sense of the word. However, for play to succeed at its own ends (for an audience to believe the actor or for the child to develop a self), the actor, the playing child must act seriously from within the act of playing a role or simply playing, fully investing her or himself in the act. At the same time, even the player and the actor must recognize that this is not him or her fully or permanently. Through this paradox of being invested in the play moment and knowing that it is just a play moment, play gets its efficacy for knowing new selves and new possibilities. Making art is a form of play and is also pursued in a free-wheeling manner that allows for discovery through play with materials. As a self is constructed through the act of play, so a self is constructed through the act of artmaking. If this is the case, then making art becomes a valuable location for developing self-understanding which is, as I have argued, a fundamental goal of all human action. And self-understanding is a key component to ethical life as we must understand ourselves if we are to understand others and we can come to see, through arts experiences, the ways each of us constructs a self in the act of making art and the similarities and dissimilarities with our own processes. Thus, we can come into closer contact with another. Ethics is about the ethically good relationships we have with others. If play and making art are playful, can they also help us discover truth? We are back to the question which concerned Descartes and Plato, how to go about finding truth. Again, Gadamer helps us with this issue. As with Descartes and Plato, Immanuel Kant revered reason and thinking, privileging conceptual knowledge over all other kinds of knowledge. He was concerned with how we find and validate truth. He considered art and aesthetics to be a “subsidiary contribution” to human knowing (“artistic element”, “feeling” and “empathy”, Gadamer, p. 39). Gadamer tells us that truth, from a hermeneutic perspective, is always temporary (as the moment we find something beyond the truth we presently know, what we already know to be truth must adjust to the new knowing) and discoverable not through the application of reason alone but through a living experience of sifting experience through our previous experiences. That is, all that we know is based on what we already have experienced and since new experiences are unpredictable, what we come to know is also unpredictable. Further, since experience is understood through the play of experience, other than pure reason is in use as we come to understand something as well as understanding ourselves. The arts are a venue where we know what we know through the multiple dimensions of intuition, emotion, body, imagination as well as reason. Thus, whatever passes for “truth” is only found through access to these multiple dimensions. This makes the arts prime meaning-making sites. From here it is not a far leap to imagine aesthetics and the arts contributing to other domains of knowledge. For instance, we can see the study of mathematics as the study of how to create a meaning mathematically, how to imagine in new ways, how the feelings of mathematical discovery are part of what is discovered, all of which can be part of our various self-understandings about our place in the world. The same can be said for the sciences, for literature, and so forth. The arts are a pure version of the person

158

7 Creativity and Aesthetic Consciousness in Teacher Education

using the arts to encounter the world in a meaningful way. This is why Gadamer expends so much energy on the arts in developing hermeneutics and why we must consider the arts not as peripheral to educating people but as central. Art is now not the domain of high art but a mode of living. Ellen Dissanayake (1995), an anthropologist, understands this idea as she assigns the production of art a biologically evolutionary role in the development of humankind. She writes that the arts have been around a long time “[a]nd so have ideas of beauty, sublimity, and transcendence, along with the verities of the human condition: love, death, memory, suffering, power, fear, loss, desire, hope, and so forth” (p. 41). She proposes a “species-centric view of art” which “recognizes and proclaims as valid and intrinsic the association between what humans have always found important and certain ways – called ‘the arts’ – that they have found to grasp, manifest, and reinforce this importance.” (p. 41) Dissanayake views art as a natural or “core behavioral tendency upon which natural selection could act” (p. 41). She enumerates various instances in which physical adornment in the form of a highly decorated body which in the West is often viewed as “superficial... nonessential... frivolous” (p. 102) but is, in the view, for instance, of the Wahgi people of Papua New Guinea, thought to reveal, not conceal. “[A]n adorned person is more important and ‘real’ than an unadorned ‘natural’ person.” (p. 102) The Wahgi distinguishes between an everyday and a special realm. In this way they use the arts to make sense of their experiences. Beautification, such as the use of cosmetics or hair styling, can be regarded as a means to instill culture, to cultivate, to civilize. Some Temne hairstyles require several days to fashion and complete; such plaiting of the hair suggests the order of civilization just as the cultivation of the land in fine rows indicates the refinement of the natural earth.” (p. 105)

She names this kind of production “making special.” The enhancement of our world contributes to our understanding of that world. “Making special” returns us to the issue of “creativity.” Placing “creativity” in quotes reminds us of the chargedness of this word. When the term is presented, most people respond with, “I’m not creative. I couldn’t possibly do this.” (I can’t “make special” for I haven’t the skill or disposition.) However, our daily lives are filled with creative moments, seen whenever we decide to do something differently: perhaps we rearrange the items on a shelf for the sheer pleasure of a different configuration or washing dishes by hand, we contemplate how we will put them differently in the dish rack, not merely for purposes of efficiency but because the arrangement pleases us visually, sensually. Even these can be moments of “creativity” in that we are making something that wasn’t there before and, simultaneously, exercising our ability to expand ourselves, to discover new dimensions of ourselves, to use ourselves in non-linear, non-instrumentalist ways. The issue with “creativity” is not, however, exhausted with a discussion of how we already could see ourselves as living creatively in a daily way. It is an open question as to whether “creativity” is the proper term for what we do. George Balanchine, the eminent twentieth-century ballet choreographer who changed ballet irrevocably, is well known to have said, “I am not creative. Only God creates; I compose.” This

Aesthetic Consciousness and Creativity

159

means that Balanchine took the extant ballet vocabulary and melded it with other sorts of movement vocabulary in new ways. He recomposed already existing material. Similarly, my sophomore year (HS) English teacher. Mr. Cook told us that there are no new stories in the world; they are all in the Bible; it is in the telling of the story that the difference is made. In Martin Buber’s essay “Education” (2002), he contrasts “creativity” with what he terms to “originator instinct.” Of creativity he writes that the child is born into the world as pure potential: across the whole extent of this planet new human beings are born who are characterized already and yet have still to be characterized . . . ten thousand souls still undeveloped but ready to develop – a creative event if ever there was one, newness rising up, primal potential might. (pp. 98–99)

He counters this notion with the “originator instinct.” (p. 100). “Man (sic), the child of man, wants to make things. He does not merely find pleasure in seeing a form arise from material that presented itself as formless. What the child desires is its own share in this becoming of things; it wants to be the subject of this event of production” (p. 100). The child is building a self through the originative act. Perhaps creativity is not the direction in which our attention should be directed. As already noted, it holds people away from their own potential. The notion of composition is much less charged. Anyone can practice rearranging what already exists. Anyone can experiment with different arrangements, assessing their impact upon others as well as assessing how they do, do not, or partially potentially express what it is s/he is thinking or knowing or wanting to know. Anyone can rearrange for the purposes of discovering new understandings about the world through the process of rearrangement. Choice making is the stock in trade of artists. It is what they do, and it is really as little intimidating as that. It is not even necessary to have great physical skill to practice choice making. When I have my students contribute a movement to a dance experience (to be described in more detail below), they can only contribute movements from the platform of their own bodies and how their bodies work. As we string together movements that are theirs, they can experience how movement fits together. They can begin to think in their bodies as they act in other parts of the daily life. As the person thinks in her/his body, s/he is practicing what I would term “aesthetic attentiveness.” Such attentiveness, when regularly practiced, leads to forming aesthetic consciousness. With this set of ideas in mind I move now to describe/discuss practices I employ in my teaching.

Teaching With/Through/For the Arts From 1979 to 2002, I was the program coordinator for a cohort teacher preparation program entitled “Teaching for a Diverse Future” (funded initially by the US Qwest Foundation) which promoted an integrated and anthropological approach to

160

7 Creativity and Aesthetic Consciousness in Teacher Education

subject matter, classroom community, and concern with justice. One of the “methods” courses I taught was entitled “Teaching for the Aesthetic Life.” This course was dedicated to students developing their capacity to utilize the arts in teaching academic subject matter but, also, and not unimportantly, using the arts as valuable in and of themselves. We made art, we talked about art, we used art to teach subject matter, and we made museum installations of art objects provided by the class. The purpose of this course was to help the students understand the place of the arts in the classroom as well as in various cultures and understand how to integrate the arts into the curriculum, both as a support of other academic endeavors and as an important aspect of human existence, worthy of being part of an educative setting. As part of this effort, in keeping with the anthropological and justice aims of the overall program, we explored the dilemmas associated with the arts, both in dominant Western culture and in the marginalized cultures which exist within the US. We had 5 “strands of experience” threaded simultaneously throughout the course: investigate art as a specific form of human experience; make art; explore themes in which art is one avenue of exploration; research and share alternative multicultural perspectives; understand art as embedded in daily living rather than considered as a separate entity. All of this was to help them discover the maker of art in themselves, to discover both the beauty/excitement and kind of work it takes to make art and all focused on purposeful meaning-making both through experience and through studying other cultures and the political dimensions of art making. However, before beginning to describe how I teach using the arts, I want to share a story from my days with the Phyllis Lamhut Dance Company that will illustrate how the arts can work on the behalf of children when those children in no way conceive of themselves as being even interested in the arts. It is a story not about children discovering their inner artist but, rather, about discovering the life-enhancing experience of simply making art without even, initially, noticing that they are doing so. As this proceeds, the children discover that “making special” (to use Dissanayake’s felicitous phrase) is not set apart from daily life but find its truth value in our daily lives and springs forth from that life. We were on tour for the federal program “Artists in the Schools,” and we were in residence in Wellesley MA. In this program we would teach dance classes throughout the chosen schools in the district (in this case the middle school) for two weeks, beginning with a lecture demonstration and ending with a full-evening concert. One day Phyllis informed me that I was to teach a class composed of students who had been trouble in their separate classes and had been separated from those classrooms into this one class for the year. I thought, “Great!” But off I went. Upon entering the room, I found the class standing against the walls around the perimeter of the room, all of them with arms folded across their chests, as if to say, “Go ahead. Make me dance.” I knew immediately that no standard approach of creative work (which is what we specialized in: bringing movement out of the students and crafting dance experiences based on that movement) was going to work here. So, I needed to change gears immediately. Realizing I was in New England, and it was winter, I asked “Do any of you play ice hockey?” They looked perplexed at the question, but they warily answered “Yes.” I said, “Great, well let’s have a game of ice hockey.” Again, they

Teaching With/Through/For the Arts

161

looked a bit perplexed but relieved. They wouldn’t have to dance. As we weren’t in an ice-rink, there was no puck or hockey sticks or ice skates, I suggested, “Let’s use the eraser as a puck and your legs as hockey sticks.” I divided them into teams, and we began, with me as the referee. I allowed them to play for about 10 min. There was tremendous energy for the game. At last, I stopped the game and said, “Well, that was great. You know I have an idea to make it more interesting. Let’s say this. We’ll have another game but this time you can’t use your legs as the hockey stick. You can use anything else you want: arms, head, backs, I don’t care, just not your legs. Ok, let’s get started.” They were game for this experiment. We kept the same teams and we played for perhaps another 10 min, and I stopped the game again, saying, “That was cool. You know, I have another idea. I’m going to take away the puck. So, you’ll have to figure out where the puck is even though it’s not visible. Same teams, same rules (no legs) and no puck.” We began and these children became engrossed in the challenging task of the invisible puck and the movements flowing from all parts of their bodies. When I at last stopped the game I said, “That was even better. You know, of course, that what you were just doing was dancing. That’s all dancing is: it’s moving and paying attention to your movement. It’s that simple.” They were astonished. They had been afraid, of course, that I was going to make them look like someone they weren’t: some ballet type probably. I had done no such thing but had, rather, allowed them to look and move like themselves, movements that came naturally from them without fitting into pre-formed molds of what is “dance.” This was what was unexpected, that they could dance and also be themselves. Perhaps, however, the real crux of the story came the next day. A smallish young man wearing a leather biker jacket and engineer boots with gloves pushed through one of the epaulets of the jacket (a young Marlon Brando?) came to find me. He said, “Yesterday you taught my class. I asked my dad if I could stay home because I wasn’t going to do any of that dance stuff. I heard it was totally cool and now I’m so bummed. When are you coming back?” We chatted for a few minutes and, unfortunately, I wasn’t scheduled for that class again. What is the point of this story? It is this, I think. I accessed their dance sensibilities, their ability to make improvisational art through what they already knew. As Maxine Greene would have it, I made the familiar strange (hockey) and the strange familiar (dance). I wasn’t afraid to abandon the typical ways in which I worked. I wasn’t afraid to look into their lives and find something that was them. I didn’t manipulate them to get them to do what I ultimately wanted (get them to, then, want a “real” dance class). I provided them with their own platform for finding themselves in an activity they would not have freely chosen for themselves because it is filled with social stigma. They came to see into the heart of this thing called dance, not into the social meanings ascribed to it. They were also able to find themselves, who they really are: movers and hockey might just be an excuse for something more basic to the human experience. That young man who regretted staying away was telling me: his friends found something outside of their everyday experience that inexplicably but surely attracted them. This is important, I think. I can’t tell you exactly what it is about making art that can attract. But, when presented in a way that draws the art

162

7 Creativity and Aesthetic Consciousness in Teacher Education

from them rather than imposing art standards on them but is, nonetheless, fully art, people are drawn to their newly discovered potential. It is in this spirit that I offer the following descriptions and discussions of what I do when I teach people to use the arts educationally. Find yourself from within an activity that is about delving into materials as a way of distancing yourself from yourself through entering into another state. This is in part what Gadamer means by “play,” and it is this play can contribute to the construction of a self, a meaningful life, and community. Here is how I began the “Teaching for the Aesthetic Life” course each semester in which it was taught. We began by making art rather than talking about it, focused initially on developing each person’s sense of looking for design, thinking about design, and thinking about the “meaning” of relationships (artmaking being primarily the act of providing experiences of relationships). This first activity was dedicated to developing, from the outset, aesthetic sensitivity. As a whole class we gathered in front of a white board with several markers in different colors. One by one, each student made a mark on the white board. The marks could only be lines (of any length and thickness) and geometric shapes (squares, circles, triangles, other such forms) of any size and any place on the white board, including within another’s already provided shape or line. Any size line or shape was acceptable. The activity was to add to what already existed by previous marks made, paying attention to the emerging set of relationships using one’s line or shape contribution to non-verbally comment upon them, provide a counterweight to them, efface them (without erasing them) or any other response to the already existing materials presented by previous learners. This part of the process involved no speaking and there was to be no talking during the event. There was no pre-ordained order as to who went first. Someone simply made the first mark and others followed as they wished. Everyone had to make a mark, and no one could make more than one mark. Left on the board was a cacophony of colored lines and shapes (both only lined or filled in) clashing, competing, and completing each other. Having completed the design we would discuss what we thought of what had been done. We talked about what we thought worked and didn’t work in terms of the abstract narrative of the design. Was the board too crowded overall? Were there parts that were filled, and other parts left more or less empty? What did we think of the distribution of “events”? How did we feel when we looked at the overall design that had emerged, literally feelings (tense, frenetic, calm, fluid)? What were people doing to pay attention to what already existed on the board when each person stepped to the board to add to the design? What did we like about it? What did we not like? What kinds of attitudes did we need to take to make it a successful experience? This last question becomes: am I making my mark to leave my mark on the board (let the world know I was there) or am I making my mark to add to what I see emerging? During this conversation I would allow people to voice their sense of inadequacy so that we could, together, show that person that her/his contribution to the whole had a particular and important role to play in the whole. The person didn’t have to make a “perfect” mark, whatever that might mean. I wanted people to be able to move past their usual sense of incompetence in the face of the arts without confronting issues of “artistic ability”

Teaching With/Through/For the Arts

163

(thus restriction to lines and shapes). Having done all this, we erased the design to begin again, this time in response to what we had just done and discussed. We were trying out our abilities to see and to participate in artmaking that paid attention to the art, rather than the person doing the art. In this way, the person became set aside and her/his capacities for thinking in this new way became evident. If time allowed, we would do the whole event a third time. What are the various “learnings” that emerge from such an activity? First, by staying away from representational work (drawing “animals,” “people,” “structures,” “plants,” and the like) we stay away from “I’m not an artist because I can’t draw” thinking. Second, by focusing on these abstract forms we can focus more on spatial and color relationships and processes of choice making: “Why did you make the mark you made? What were you trying to do?” We begin to “look” as an artist would look. Third, we are developing a more general sensibility to the world around us as a place of color and emotion (colors carrying hints of emotion). Fourth, by developing such an eye we could each come to understand our abilities as arts-thinkers, as people who had an aesthetic consciousness that might not be well-explored yet was present. We were creative and creativity was not restricted to a special few. (In the context of this class I strategically used the word “creative” because, like it or not, it is always present.) This “creativity” did not demand the making of something wholly new and unique but drew upon common “objects” (geometric forms and various colors) that were arranged in a particular way, composed, and recomposed. It is in the act of composition and recomposition that discoveries emerge. Everyone has a latent aesthetic consciousness which needs, initially, enlivening. This leads to the second dimension of teaching pre-service students. The consciousness needs cultivation which means the learner needs guidance in pursuing its development. As an example of the kinds of guidance I provided, we had one assignment, a fairly typical one for making art with “non-artists”: the making of a collage. I asked each student to bring in an array of materials including cloth, colored paper, objects (both natural and humanly made) as well as photographs that, all taken together, pointed toward a theme which the person wanted to explore/express through making the collage. (Photographs are not, strictly speaking, collage materials but are, more conventionally, chosen for making photo montages. However, in a concession to people desiring some representational materials I allowed it.) Whatever theme was chosen and whatever materials secured, the idea was to not merely present a topic (often students would want to do a collage dealing with family or children or nature but without comment upon it) but an idea about the meaning of “family” or “children” or “nature.” That is, what exactly does the student artist want to explore about that “topic,” what does s/he think s/he wishes to convey about it that might lead to new understanding of the topic? The collages were always constructed during a class meeting. I would ask each student to only assemble her/his collage without fixing it to the support (heavy oak tag). I would go around the room, having private consultations with each student. I would inquire into the idea s/he was using and what it is that s/he wanted us to experience as we encountered the collage. I worked to move the ideas beyond what I would call “the sentimental.” That is, if a person wanted to have a collage deal with

164

7 Creativity and Aesthetic Consciousness in Teacher Education

“loving all children” I would ask that person to think of the many ways we actually love children so that there could a multiplicity of images of “love” that provided the possibility we could experience various sorts of love, rather than love in general. I might also investigate their idea by attempting to guide them toward some of the paradoxes, conflicts, and confusions that might be explored through art and perhaps even temporarily resolved through the artmaking (This is important: something can be learned about the “topic” through the artmaking that wouldn’t be available through other forms of exploration). Then we could talk about how to arrange those images on the collage, remembering that I asked that there be quite a few abstract areas not using photographs or words. How would the person “translate” the ideas into abstract images of color and form that might move the experiencer toward “love”? The difficulty in this kind of teaching pertains to people’s sense of ownership of their art. It is conventional that learners will not want to have their ideas about making the collage questioned: their thinking is off-limits to critique. They feel quite possessive of it. Thus, when I ask the kinds of questions described above, the learners sometimes have felt that I am interfering with her/his creative process. I must remind the student that just as we teach people to write more effectively and sometimes ask a person to alter her/his present voice or to find a new voice that is still her or his, in this case I am providing guidance for them to understand the artistic process. It is not about interfering with their creative process but about giving that process more gravity, more clarity, more sureness. Making art is not haphazard or unsystematic. It is, also, not done by following rules. Being a matter of cultivating improved choice making about the selection of a focus, the selection of materials and studying ways to organize those materials and manipulate them, having a teacher facilitate that choice making only makes sense. It’s important to notice that I never tell a student what it is s/he wants to do is not acceptable. I only give guidance for effective ways to bring about what is desired. As an example of guidance, in this activity learners often intended to use all the materials they had brought to class. I would urge upon the learners the general principle that “less is more.” One line in a drawing carefully situated speaks volumes in the tensions and energy it creates vis á vis the whole. I reminded everyone of the opening activity of the semester. I asked them to accept my critiques not as interfering with their creative process but of helping them hone that process through my experienced guidance. This is a central tenet of the work: by manipulating materials (in this case collage materials), by focusing on the purely sensory aspect of the work, by keeping in mind the idea being explored, by grappling with the ways in which the materials aren’t always cooperative in finding resolutions to either aesthetic or conceptual problems (or both) or providing what the artist had in her/his mind about the final product, in all these ways, something might be learned about the idea at hand that was not available without performing the artistic process. Discovery through art was a central theme of concern for our curriculum and, consequently, for preparing teachers to teach. Our culture is fixated upon the scientific method. Douglas Sloan (1983) labeled our age one of “scientism”: science is useful for coming to understand some things, but we have come to over apply it, as if it is the only avenue for understanding. Our curriculum is laden with academics that appeal only to the mind and logic. Even when there are pedagogical efforts that

Teaching With/Through/For the Arts

165

may bring in some form of art-like making (creating poster-board presentations on writers or creating shoebox dioramas of a book), the artmaking is entirely secondary to the mind material that is supposedly enhanced by this activity. The quality of the resulting product is rarely evaluated or valued. The notion that we might know something through artmaking that is not knowable through any other means is not part of our daily thinking about education. The development of aesthetic consciousness is, therefore, more than merely a nice addition to the quality of life. Aesthetic consciousness, aesthetic attentiveness is part of our knowing and, more importantly, a profound component of our connection with the world around us. As already pointed out, we are not disembodied brains; the brain is throughout our bodies and knowing in our bodies and paying attention to our bodies is another way of understanding. We are not born being able to use our bodies adeptly for knowing beyond our cognitive capacities. We must learn to know in our bodies just as much as we learn to know from our minds. Thus, teaching toward aesthetic consciousness is important and crucial. As a corollary activity to the above, the students were asked to choose an artmedium of any sort and make several “objects” during the semester. We would, at the end of the semester, have a “gallery opening” in which everyone would display their objects and tell us about the experience of choosing the medium, working through the medium, and conceptualizing and executing the specific project. The project could be quilt-making, t-shirt dying, drawing, making music, cooking, photography, and the like. When I did this task as a graduate student, I took on drawing with oil pastels that I owned. I drew two portraits of my wife. They weren’t skilled productions but the process of really looking (in some ways for the first time) and trying to move through my hand and choosing colors to render something on paper that might be construed to be faithful to what I saw, brought home to me both the joy and frustration of making art. I, of course, had known this during my long career as a dancer but here I was re-confronting the daunting task of developing some skill for a purpose while privileging the reason for making the art over worrying about my ability to make it. During that experience, I found some things were very satisfying (drawing her hair, for instance, seemed to go well the second time) and even if the whole struck me as not what I really saw and wanted, I still could look to elements and feel the goodness of those elements. I asked them not to have the project be writing. I was trying to move them away from words to other modalities of imagination for each of them to open her/himself up to their own unrealized potential as artists. At the same time, I desired for them to take on a project of personal meaning as an experience of what it would be like to do so that they might be able to place such work in their own classrooms and feel confident that, having done this for themselves they could offer guidance to their learners as their learners embarked on their own activity of self-discovery. It was also important for them to see that they could do such work and leverage it for personal value. To the degree that they allowed themselves to engage in this activity, to that degree they would have something to offer their own learners. I teach that a curriculum is worthy of our attention only when it addresses three areas of concern: the acquiring of knowledge and skill, the construction of a self through activities

166

7 Creativity and Aesthetic Consciousness in Teacher Education

that focus upon knowledge and skill, and the dedication, through learning in an environment of self-development, to building an ethical society. This curriculum was dedicated to a demonstration and experience of this three-part proposition. They were to come to know something about making art and its processes, they were to come to construct a self that could make art and value the experience of so doing, and they were to come to think about how this art affected their community (building an ethical society, thereby, because they were paying attention to their responsibilities toward that community). I have focused, so far, on the act of artmaking as artmaking. It is clear, however, that work with the arts also affords an avenue into understanding cognitive things in new ways that give new access to knowing. Again, an example is important here. Returning to my experience with Artist-in-the-Schools, while on a two-week school residency in Camden NJ my teaching partner, Natasha Simon, and I were asked to do a dance class dealing with fractions as the 4th graders were having difficulty with the idea of “fraction.” We chose the following. We gathered all the children to one side of the room, in three lines. Three students at a time, we asked them to draw a large arc through the space, beginning at the floor where they were and ending at the other side of the room. They did this back and forth several times (to drum accompaniment). Then we asked them to draw two smaller arcs, the first arc ending in the middle of the room and the second arc ending at the other side of the room. Again, we had them all do this several times. Then we asked for thirds. We moved to them drawing with other than their hands. And we strung spatial divisions of various amounts together, creating a dance that could work as a dance, not just as a support of academic knowledge. Eventually we had the students improvise dances of dividing the space in smaller and larger parcels and we employed fractions language in doing so. In this way the students embodied fractions rather than simply trying to cognize them. Perhaps Piaget would have been disparaging: by their age they were to be beyond the “concrete” phase of learning. However, as we saw it, we created the basis for a dance, not an illustration. We insisted on the dance aspect: “Pay attention to your bodies, how they feel when you draw these arcs, what it’s like drawing with your leg or your head?” We provided a movement vocabulary out of which to create improvised dances. It was crucial the dance aspect of this event be genuine and not simply illustrative. The students had to be invested in their bodies, not in the cognitive information. In this way they saw space differently. It became substance to them whereas before it was merely something unseen through which they passed. We had put them into contact with a basic substrate of all existence in a way that made it real. The teacher later reported to us that they understood in a way she hadn’t thought possible. This narrative presents various dimensions of the use of the arts in teaching subject matter. First, and foremost, the art aspect of the teaching must never be short-changed, otherwise the teaching is weak. Neither thinking aesthetically nor academically become robust. Second, there need be no complex art activity for the art to be present. Please note that so far that all the examples I have presented work with simple materials and simple ideas. Despite this I would argue that they are sophisticated as they demand the highest level of aesthetic considerations: design,

Teaching With/Through/For the Arts

167

relationships, formation of vocabulary, wise choices made, all dedicated to finding something out about the “topic” at hand, whether that topic is design and emotion (the group drawing activity) or the discovery of meaning about an idea (the collage activity) or cognitive knowledge (the fractions activity). Third, this “finding out” is based in the art and while some of the “learning” might be accomplished by other means (for instance the fractions example) the location of the learning (the body and the senses) makes for other learning to be simultaneously accessed (body and senses learning) and orientations toward what is learned are changed. What is learned is unique to the mode of learning and is found in no other way than through the art activity. I am emphasizing “activity” as opposed to “talking about” what is learned/accessed. This is not to say that “talking about” is not, itself, a sort of activity but rather, that the kind of activity it is (one which is favored by conventional education) is at a remove from that which is under examination. What is learned is a “cognitive disposition toward” and “adeptness at thinking about” but itself is not the thing under examination. One is not preferable over the other, but they are distinctive one from the other. The issue of forming a vocabulary of aesthetics brings me to another event/activity I utilized with my teacher preparation students. When the artist works s/he always works with vocabulary of one sort or another. Even Jackson Pollack, in his famous action paintings, worked with vocabulary of splashing, flung, wiped, dashed paint with his body as a vehicle for that splashing, flinging, wiping, dashing. Wassily Kandinsky asserted that color had meaning and that through assembling colors in certain ways he could stimulate particular responses on the part of viewers of his paintings. He didn’t mean this behavioristically but only that people respond to color with meanings. These are both examples of abstract artists who didn’t present recognizable representations. This is important because while vocabulary might be construed as what is being represented (Georgia O’Keefe’s paintings of flowers for example) it is not that at all. Vocabulary, for her, would be how she manipulated colored paint in the space of the canvas to represent nature to us. Many people could paint the flowers she painted, so the real genius lies in how she saw the flowers and how she manipulated materials to bring that vision to us. The resulting paintings are an amalgam of seeing and materials interacting and modifying each other in the process of making the painting. Her need was to discover a vocabulary of color and form that would do for her what she desired. In that spirit, I worked with my pre-service students to create non-verbal vocabulary through their responses to poetry. Prior to this we had already had several dance experiences in which we created movement vocabulary. As an example, in one class, standing in a circle facing each other, I would ask each person, one at a time, to provide a movement for a body part. We would then learn that person’s movement, imitating it as best we could. When we had gathered perhaps four or five of these, we would then link them together and dance the short dance we had just created several times, honing our ability to get the movement correct and our ability to perform the transitions between movements so that the whole dance felt complete. It is significant that this dance was generated from the students, not from official dance movement vocabulary. I emphasized that this was “legitimate” dance,

168

7 Creativity and Aesthetic Consciousness in Teacher Education

“legitimate” art, not anything less. This was not a manipulation to encourage them to continue. In my estimation, it qualifies as art. They weren’t going to be practicing artists and didn’t see themselves as such and weren’t going to live their lives seeing events and simultaneously seeing possible dances (something endemic to all artists). Nevertheless, this was art. In later classes we worked on dance improvisations. I would provide a simple idea (walking forward backwards, walking on tiptoes walking low to the ground) and they would then begin to perform that idea. In this case they would only be able to walk forward, backward, on tiptoes or low to the ground. That was the vocabulary. They could vary the speed, they could pause, they could imitate another person, they could have momentary duets or trios or quartets of walking (walking alike or walking differently), or anything else that occurred to them. They were learning to be aware of others in the space, aware of how their movement would change when joining another, learn new ways to be in their bodies as they imitated someone else and learning how to craft art in an immediate way that didn’t give time for self-editing. Another idea I often employed was to have a person’s arm be her/his brain—s/he must go where the arm wants to go, do what it wants to do; don’t think about it, just do it. They experienced themselves as thinking in movement rather than thinking about movement, being directly with their body than studying their body. These kinds of activities enabled them to see that all movement is potentially dance movement if you approach it correctly. This experiencing of movement, then, became the basis for working with the poetry. For working with poetry, I selected some poems to which I asked them to respond in small groups. First each group read their poem together. There was to be little discussion of the “meaning” of the poem. Rather they were to focus on the feel of the poem, on the actions suggested by the poem or the mood of the poem. However, the purpose was not to “act out” the poem. If a poem was gloomy, one wouldn’t do movements that represented being glum. Rather, one would take inside oneself the mood of the poem (gloom) and make a dance in which no matter what you did, it would feel gloomy. There weren’t specific movements that translated into “gloomy” but rather a way of dancing that attempted to experience the essence of gloom. As a concrete example, I will recount the following. Phyllis Lamhut, my choreographer, told us of making a dance having to do with the “evil eye.” She didn’t merely make glaring actions. Rather, she took inside herself “evil eye,” experienced through what “evil eye” might be and then generated movements that were at the “essence” of “evil eye.” Her solution to this “problem”: she sat in a corner, knees drawn up, shivering and huddled. This movement was her sense of the essence of “evil eye.” This is what I mean by “experience the essence of gloom.” How you would, finally, choreograph and dance “gloom” wouldn’t be easily or conventionally predictable. The process described above is available to anyone, both as a student and as a pedagogue. Most of the above are not complicated activities and do not require a great physical skill. This does not mean that those wishing to work in this way shouldn’t study dance, drawing, music, photography, and so forth but people can begin to conceive of themselves as people capable of sharing such work with students. Thus, certainly a teacher might want to cultivate the experiences for her/himself prior to

Teaching With/Through/For the Arts

169

using it in the classroom. I wanted my own students to understand their own potential to use the arts to illuminate subject matter without feeling intimidated and wanted them to experience drawing upon the resources of the students. My lessons were always accompanied with meta-lessons where we would stop in the midst of our work, and I would ask the class what we had just done and what are the principles behind teaching in that way? We would analyze the teaching itself so that they could see how they could use it because they now better understood it. Experiencing it is not sufficient: talk about the practice itself is necessary in order to be useful in their later practice. It is important to note that none of the above-described activities are drawn from popular culture. That is, none of them draw from break dancing or hip-hop or jazz or modern dance or ballet. They do not draw from any official form, all of which would impede the success of the experience. The success is based on a, relatively speaking, unedited response to poetry, to fractions, to an idea rather than an illustration of poetry, fractions, or ideas. These were not “representations of” but were a “response to.” It is not only pre-service teachers who can benefit from art experiences. I also use art experiences when working with certified teachers who study curriculum development. There are three experiences I will describe here, none of which has to do with dance but all three of which have to do with the senses (aesthesis). The first of these was developed out of a passage in Buber’s essay “Education” (2002). At one point Buber is exploring the responsibility of a teacher who wishes to lead his students out, to enable them to discover themselves. He describes the following scene: The teacher of the “free” school places on the table a twig of broom, say, in an earthenware jug, and makes the pupils draw it. Or he places it on the table, tells the pupils to look at it, removes, it, and then makes them draw it. If the pupils are quite unsophisticated soon not a single drawing will look like another. Now the delicate, almost imperceptible, and yet important influence begins – that of criticism and instruction. The children encounter a scale of values that, however unacademic it may be, is quite constant, a knowledge of good and evil that, however individualistic it may be, is quite unambiguous. The more unacademic this scale of values, and the more individualistic this knowledge, the more deeply do the children experience the encounter. . . . the pupil gains the realization only after he (sic) has ventured far out on the way to his (sic) achievement, his heart is drawn to reverence for the form, and educated. (p. 105)

In response to this passage, I present my students with an object such as the twig described by Buber or a wooden block or a candle and a pen or any other small object. Everyone is given a good-sized piece of paper and an array of drawing materials (markers, crayons, and pencils, both colored and black) from which to choose. The assignment is “Respond to the object thinking about curriculum. What is your immediate relationship to this object before you? Don’t think too long on the relationship. Simply look and respond.” I make it clear that this is not an art-exercise but another way of contacting their thinking. The quality of the “art” isn’t important. The response in another form (non-verbal and bodily) is important. That is why I ask them to not overthink the relationship. We take approximately 20 min to create our images and then, one by one, we share with the class the image and we speak to what

170

7 Creativity and Aesthetic Consciousness in Teacher Education

it means to us, how the image provides an expression of the response. I ask everyone to not apologize for the “art” work but to see this as experiencing a different way of thinking about something, in this case curriculum but it could be any topic, any area and the object could be any object. The object itself is not important. It is merely a prompt for aesthetic responsiveness. Both these injunctions and the subsequent activity adhere to Buber’s notion of presenting an unacademic scale of values (not emphasizing a “correct” way to draw or think) that is individualistic (personal), thus leading to the students experiencing more deeply their own achievements in thinking in this new way. Simultaneously, we do not succumb to the falseness of pure individuality as we come to see the commonalities in our thinking about the themes at hand, the commonalities of our responses to the request to draw in the first place and something of the origins of our own thought as we probe the “why did you respond in this way” question. All of this allows each of us, as we encounter another’s response to the task, to look to ourselves and our responses to the task, thus forming ourselves as thinkers of certain kinds, thinkers that can be “successful” at thinking in this way because there are no barriers to thinking and we need not prevent ourselves from thinking because our approach doesn’t fit official molds. The second activity I use with my Masters curriculum development students is more conventional: we watch a film. The film, however, is not an education film and is not a conventional story form. It is “My Dinner with Andre” (1981), a Louis Malle film with Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn. Gregory and Shawn had been having a series of interesting dinner conversations at a restaurant in NYC. Later, relating these events to Louis Malle, he suggested they recreate these conversations for a film, condensing them into one evening. Shawn and Gregory played out their conversations for several months, recording them. Subsequently Shawn consolidated, edited, and reorganized those conversations into a screen play which was, then, filmed. This is, ostensibly, a “talking heads” film. However, as the two “characters” traverse, defend, and question the very different trajectories of their own lives (Gregory on a worldcrossing, in more than one sense, seeking of self through mythic activities, emotional and desperate and beautiful, Shawn playing the stable, stay-at-home, occupy-hissmall-nook of his world, in this case the theater world) we find a film filled with emotion, contrasts, conflict, and all the other underpinnings of our everyday lives. As my students watch this film, I ask them to consider the stories of these two men and what each of the stories might mean for the curriculum that they teach and that they consider to be of worth (which, of course, might be different from each other). I am purposefully attempting to disrupt their taken-for-granted living of their education lives. Andre is also trying to do this, and his tale is one of great emotion as well as confusion and paradox. I want my students to feel the emotion as Andre tries to connect himself with the world around him through other than conventional means and I want them not to judge either Andre or Wally but, rather, consider what their very different views of meaning might have to do with teaching and curriculum. The film is important as a vehicle and without it there could be no such consideration of difference. At the same time, it is more than an intellectual vehicle. Often talking heads films are just about ideas. “My Dinner with Andre” is not just about ideas but about a life lived, replete with fear, love, paradox, effort and all the rhythms of

Teaching With/Through/For the Arts

171

poetry/music. It is important to see art and art encounters not as representations of X but, rather, a direct experience of X. It is only in the direct experience of X that learning occurs. As with the drawing activity, the purpose here isn’t to become a distanced film critic or respond to ideas but to engage with the people in the film, with their lives as lived and feel the connections to their own lives, and especially, their own curricular lives. I want them to feel, not just think in a disembodied manner. A third activity, also with my Masters students, does leverage words but into nonverbal spaces. During one class I ask the students to create a metaphor for curriculum and then, analyze the implications of that metaphor. I ask them to not think long and hard about the metaphor but to, instead, accept the first image that comes to mind. I allow them, if need be, to use the simile locution (X is like Y) and then transform it into a metaphor by removing the world “like” from the locution. Why is this? The function of a metaphor is to put together two wholly unlike entities in immediate proximity as if each is identical to the other even though, intellectually we know them to be wholly different from each other. As an example, we may say “The spokes of the sun,” referencing the rays of light the sun emits and likening them to the spokes of a wheel. We know that the sun’s rays are not the spokes of a wheel, and we know that the spokes of a wheel are not the rays of the sun. But, when put together in this way, both the rays of the sun and the spokes of a wheel are transformed into something new. They are brought together “as if” they are the same. As Ken Schenck puts it, Paul Ricoeur calls this the “rule of metaphor” in which “[t]here is no mere substitution of one word for another... a new meaning takes place... A new signification emerges.” With metaphors the meaning lies in their semantic relationship to each other within the sentence and the interpretations we make of them as we dwell within the moment of the insight provided by the metaphor. The act of analysis reveals the possible meanings perhaps hidden from view. One student, during this activity, posited the following: “The curriculum is a baseball game.” I asked him what he meant? He initially meant, he said, that the learner was the batter, the ball was the curriculum, and the pitcher was the teacher. The batter’s task was to hit the ball well. I asked him to look at this in more detail. I asked what was the purpose of the pitcher? He responded it was to get the batter to either strike out or hit ineffectually. The batter was meant to fail. I asked him how this would occur. I responded that it might occur, through the ball (the curriculum) by throwing the batter off through its spin that could drop the ball as a sinker or curve away from the plate or curve away from the batter at the last moment or throw so fast that the batter could not get her/his bat around quickly enough to hit the ball. In short, to make the batter fail. I asked him if this seemed consonant with his understanding of the relationship between baseball and the curriculum. He said no. Then I suggested that perhaps this metaphor revealed something about his innermost attitudes about the curriculum itself. Perhaps the curriculum was frustrating as he had experienced it and didn’t seem to facilitate the success of either the teacher or the learner. Perhaps the curriculum and the structure of the baseball relationship between the pitcher and the batter was, as experienced, a problem. What if, however, one reconsidered the metaphor and saw this self-same relationship as an exciting challenge in which the batter could figure out the pitch which produced difficulties for him or her and

172

7 Creativity and Aesthetic Consciousness in Teacher Education

actually hit the ball well or not swing, get a ball and eventually, either through a walk or good contact, get on base? What if the challenge presented by the ball (the curriculum) was a welcome challenge and which the pitcher (teacher) could admire the success the batter (the learner) as the pitcher (teacher) had presented an exciting challenge and the batter (learner) had arisen to the occasion? Would this change the relationship between the teacher and learner? I offered my own metaphor. Curriculum is a dark cloud. It was the first image that came to mind. What could I mean by this? First, a dark cloud has intimations of rain which is needed by the earth. So, there is potential in that cloud for life to grow. Second, the cloud is dark (which surprised me at the time). The curriculum was darkness. There is something ominous about that cloud because the amount of rain might be a problem (too much or too little) and would provide no succor to the earth. Too much might mean flash flooding and that people could die. Third, continuing with darkness, the curriculum hid from us dimensions of possibilities and knowledge. It wasn’t an easy transparency. What was hidden in the curriculum of which we weren’t aware? There was challenge in this image as well as hope. The curriculum is, for me, always this uneasy relationship between a future of hopefulness and a future of danger. I hadn’t expected such an image. This is the purpose of the activity, to reveal dimensions of which a person isn’t aware, to get around the personal desire to present something that is already approved, to avoid personal self-confrontation with the daily confusions in which we really live. It is a species of dialectical unlearning. It is “unlearning” in that it is a way of confronting what is hidden and yet part of a person. It is dialectical in that we find both “goodness” and “problematic” dimensions of our relationship to curriculum within the self-same metaphor. In other words, there is no idea that is either wholly incorrect or wholly correct. All such ideas carry their dual character inside themselves and our task, as educators, is to bring to the surface these relationships. Such an “outcome” is achieved through an aesthetic response to the topic at hand, skirting the easily voiced position that is already prepared in your mind. This easily voiced position hides the fuller self-understanding. Ironically a seemingly “easy” image such as “the curriculum is a baseball game” becomes upon deeper analysis to hide uncomfortable truths that force a person to confront her/himself and, thereby, come to a greater selfunderstanding. I have always found this activity to be revelatory in important ways achievable through no other way than the aesthetic way of physically inhabiting an image and living its reality beyond the intellectual.

Conclusion This chapter, as I wrote at the outset, is designed to lay some theoretical foundation for action and then, present some examples of actions taken in the light of the theoretical foundation. The activities offered are designed to help people become aware not only of their capacities to think aesthetically, opening them up to new ways of being. They, also, are designed to help people confront what they really believe about the world.

Conclusion

173

This result is particularly important given the assertion, at the outset of this book, that a most important dimension of this work is to learn to question ourselves and our orthodoxies. These activities are designed to do two kinds of self-questioning. The first way is to help people see themselves differently. The abstract group marking project is exemplary of this. Marking on the white board is designed not only to help people begin to “see” aesthetically but also to shake them out of the notion that art can only be done by skilled people, to have them understand that what we did was actually art. As I discussed, and it bears repeating, it is important to allow people to discover that art isn’t the object you make (no matter how skilled or unskilled) but the experience of thinking as an artist thinks, dwelling in the world through your senses of all kinds. Art becomes a way of life, similar to Willy Wonka’s statement “There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination.” A second way of self-questioning is to use the art experiences as opportunities to see what you cannot see. How can this be? Chris Argyris’ “action science” precepts (Argyris et. al, 1985) provide an answer to this question. Argyris developed something he called “action science.” Action science is designed to reveal our underlying theoretical structures that inform our everyday actions. Behind any everyday action or thought lies a theory of how the world works; Argyris averred that people always function from theory, that there is no action which is not supported by some theory of action. He asserted, further, that there were two kinds of theories in play in our daily lives: espoused theory and theory in use. Espoused theories are those theories we can state quite clearly about how we think something in the world works. We usually assume that our actions reflect our espoused theories. However, there is a second set of theories in play: theories in use. These are theories, of which we are not aware, that underlie our daily actions. Often the theories in use that underlie our actions are theories of which we might not, at first, approve. They conflict with our espoused theories. By becoming aware of the conflict between our actual theories (theories in use) and our espoused theories we have the opportunity to rethink our actions. We may find that we are pleased with our theories in use. If so, then we can come to terms with what we really believe. If, however, we are not pleased with the theories we are unwittingly preferring, then we have the opportunity to make more conscious decisions about how to act going forward. The offered activities in this chapter are examples of ways of turning off or sidelining our editing function (that might protect us from coming to awareness about our conflicts). This work is not easy as it requires us to question ourselves and who we really are. That is even more reason to pursue such work. As stated in the “Mosaical Curriculum Thinking” chapter, this is central to this entire book.

References Argyris, C., Putnam, R., & Smith, D. M. (1985). Action science. Jossey-Bass Inc. Blumenfeld-Jones. (2009). Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence and dance education: critique, revision, and potentials for the democratic ideal in Journal of Aesthetic Education, 43(1), 59–76.

174

7 Creativity and Aesthetic Consciousness in Teacher Education

Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste (Trans., Richard Nice). Routledge & Kegan Paul. Buber, M. (2002). Education in between man and man (Trans., Ronald Gregor Smith). Routledge (pp. 98–122). Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. Minton, Balch and Company. Dissanayake, E. (1995). Homo aestheticus: Where art comes from and why. University of Washington Press. Gadamer, H.-G. (1975). Truth and method (2nd ed.). Crossroads. Gans, H. J. (1974). Popular culture and high culture; an analysis and evaluation of taste. Basic Books. Johnson, M. (1993). Moral imagination: Implications of cognitive science for ethics. The University of Chicago Press. Macdonald, J. B. (1974/1995). A transcendental developmental ideology of education. In B. J. Macdonald (Ed.), Theory as a prayerful act: The collected essays of James B. Macdonald (pp. 69– 98). Peter Lang Publishing, Inc. Malle, L. (1981). My dinner with Andre. A film. Schenck, K. (2014). https://kenschenck.blogspot.com/2014/08/monday-ricoeur-metaphor-and-sym bol-3.html Sloan, D. (1983). Insight-imagination: The emancipation of thought and the modern world. Greenwood Press. Snow, C. P. (1993). Two cultures. Cambridge University Press. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Wikipedia. (2008). Entry for Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. http://plato.stanford.edu/ & (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Gottlieb_Baumga rten.) Williams, R. (1973). Base and superstructure in marxist cultural theory. New Left Review (82) (December), 3–16.

Chapter 8

Identity, Self, and Liberation

Abstract This chapter explores what it means to craft an identity. It begins with the idea of identity itself, referencing James Baldwin’s and Emmanuel Levinas’ crucial work on identity. Acts of imagination are shown to be central to the crafting of identity. The terrain of aesthetic consciousness follows. A dance program dedicated to the development of a self is discussed, contextualized within a discussion of race issues in America as they collide with social issues and with aesthetics followed by a discussion of a variety of identity oriented African-American dance approaches. These are explored in the light of Raymond Williams work on hegemony and its relationship to identity politics. In the last part of the chapter, the dance program itself, designed for African-American middle schoolers in Durham, NC is presented as an alternative approach to identity construction that is political in a way consonant with discussion of politics in other chapters in the book but differing from conventional identity politics. Keywords Identity · Self · Curriculum studies · Modern dance · Hegemony · Dialectics · Liberation · Dance · Race · Class · Beauty · Aesthetics · Raymond Williams · Katherine Dunham [In Chapter 3 (devoted to dialectical unlearning) I explore the problematics of a narrow view of “being critical” with illustrative discussions of categories favored in today’s dominant curriculum studies practices (such as race, gender, ethnicity, ability, and so forth). I also raise the question of identity. In this present chapter I explore the category of “identity” in a more concentrated manner and use one of its particularized forms, race, to develop an understanding of the problematic of identity more robustly. I do not deny the value of using one’s given identity as an anchor in one’s life. But, as will be discussed below, an exclusive focus upon ones’ identity as the sole conferrer of value, misses the contradictory experiences each of us has when placed under a label. (All identities are labels use to locate us in the larger society and, as such, are inevitably restrictive.) At this historical juncture, I feel compelled to discuss why I, a “white” person (not exactly white as I am Jewish—discussed briefly below and in the chapter) feel capable or am allowed to explore race as an issue in a way that may diverge from the mainstream social justice narrative. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 D. S. Blumenfeld-Jones, Reimagining Curriculum Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9877-4_8

175

176

8 Identity, Self, and Liberation

I begin by acknowledging that race has been used to divide us from the beginning of this nation (indeed, throughout Western history, race has been a dividing line). The category of “race” has been used throughout US history to divide us by branding some people as “not American”: • the Irish for decades defined as “black” and immoral, • Italians as dangerously Catholic, • Jews as a thoroughly “foreign” and strange Semitic entity still not truly seen as legitimate, • Asian-Americans brought here as labor and despised as strange and inscrutable and now brilliant people displacing white person’s privilege, • almost any non-white group that has found refuge in the US over many decades, • and African-American, Hispanic-Americans, and Indigenous-American people always cast as inferior human beings in an almost biological fashion. In particular African-Americans have their history of enslavement since the founding moments of what became this country, a history shared by no other group, as the most particularly heinous inheritance of our country. In their case, perhaps more than others, race has been used to debase and destroy. According to some (Hannah-Jones, et.al, 2021), the enslavement of Black people is definitional to the history of this nation. Given this history, some might assert that I cannot understand this history, except as benefiting, now, of being categorized as white, thus living a life of privilege based on nothing more than my complexion. With this as background, I must address the question of interrogating “identity” in its form of race which might be asked as follows: How dare I discuss race when I share in white privilege? Why not choose some other “identity” to interrogate identity? While I might have, the curriculum project which I explore here was inevitably entwined with race (as described below). Further, given that our society is in the midst of what has been termed a “racial reckoning,” it seems necessary to confront race directly. I hope to de-weaponize both identity and race which have been weaponized by all sides. The political right has used race to justify its own status as the preeminent, truly “American” group. Marginalized, non-white peoples have insisted on the value of their identities, accepting “identity” as central to their lives, and celebrating it. This contemporary moment can be characterized as “identity politics” (a currently dominant theme in curriculum studies), used contradictorily to either forward the history of the repressed groups, especially Black Americans, or forward white people as the true inheritors of the American way of life. If I suggest that there are other dimensions to the story of race and identity, am I not simply fostering a continuation of the oppression and repression of all the oppressed groups, most especially Black Americans? Given the above, I admit to being uncomfortable with my own explorations in this chapter. I fear that I am not helping the situation. And, yet I persist. Why? I do so because, as will be explored below, the emphasis on identity of any kind carries difficulties far more complex than the politics of identity wishes to acknowledge. Applying a critical approach to its complexity reveals its dialectical character, which affords new ways to think about identity, race, and our society without sacrificing the

8 Identity, Self, and Liberation

177

clearly righteous anger and actions of those who would move our history forward into a post-racist society (which cannot be accomplished without confronting our racist history, especially slavery). I am in accord with that desire to change but am not in accord with making identity the only way to understand what it means to be a human being. To allow ourselves to be completely defined by some identity or even identities is to miss the opportunity to realize a fuller possibility for each of us. This is not an either/or proposition. It is both/and in accord with the dialectical constructs that inform the thinking in this book. Can we live in that slash between identity (identities)/self? I assert that we do not have to choose but maintain a humble attitude toward our own confusions. Perhaps that is not good for politics as presently practiced but I also assert that the truth of “both/and,” the “identity/self” dialectical partnership cannot be denied. Confronting these difficulties constitutes part of a reimagining of Curriculum Studies.]

Introduction: A Dialectic of Identity and Self This chapter focuses on reimagining racial identity through discussing a dance program I offered in a middle school in Durham, NC. Prior to exploring multiple possibilities for this reimagining, it is worth considering how might we think about identity in a general way and the nuances of race? James Baldwin’s thinking helps us here. Baldwin wrote of identity itself as follows: Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one’s nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one’s nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one’s robes. (James Baldwin, 2021)

Identity “covers the nakedness of the self.” Identity and self are conceptualized as different from each other, with self as a more core state of being but also never found isolated from identity. (Consciousness, here, is understood as standing astride this dialectic, confused but also energized by the tension between identity and self.) Emmanuel Levinas (discussed in Chapter 5, “Freedom All Too Human”) wrote of the Other as an infinite being who could never be spoken for by any label attached to the Other. The Other always exceeds all attempts to know the Other. Baldwin’s notion of “nakedness” is another way of understanding Levinas’ notion of “radical alterity” (radical, complete otherness) that cannot be known through labels such as “race.” Perhaps “racial identity” is not a given attribute with which we are born but a “garment” we might wear or change or are forced to wear by social forces. Baldwin certainly suggests this. But Baldwin also avowed that the dialectic of self/identityculture in which culture attaches labels such as “race” to individuals who understand themselves as unique selves, to be a dialectic constantly negotiated and suffered through. Baldwin wrote, in Notes of a Native Son (2012a), If I was trying to discover myself … there was, certainly, between that self and me, the accumulated rock of ages [which] scarred the hand, and all tools broke against it. … there

178

8 Identity, Self, and Liberation

was a me, somewhere: I could feel it, stirring within and against captivity. The hope of … identity … depended on whether or not one would be able to decipher and describe the rock. … The accumulated rock of ages deciphered itself as a part [not the totality] of my inheritance … but, in order to claim my birthright … it was necessary to challenge and claim the rock. Otherwise, the rock claimed me. (p. 144)

“The rock of ages”: an accumulation of society’s understandings within which each individual stands. Baldwin’s identity was held, in part, by society’s definitions of him (“the rock of ages”) but Baldwin’s self (“there was a me”) stirred against the “captivity” of that social destiny. In order “to claim my birthright” Baldwin would have to both challenge society’s demands and claim demands for himself, some of which might go against the grain of what society insisted he was, some of which he claimed from the rock for his very own. Of that society, which he termed “inheritance”, he wrote, … my inheritance was particular, specifically limited and limiting: my birthright was vast, connecting me to all that lives, and to everyone, forever. But one cannot claim the birthright without accepting the inheritance. (p. 155)

Baldwin might have inherited society, as do we all, but Baldwin knew that this inheritance was twofold: the limiting inheritance (the demands of society) and his birthright, a connection “to all that lives,” a vast inheritance not limited by any one view of reality. To “claim” his “birthright” he would have to accept what society offered him as well as work against it. Why? As it turns out, for Baldwin, we cannot escape our inheritance to be anything we want to be. What Baldwin referenced in “inheritance” Buber wrote of in his recognition of communion with destiny (culture/society), nature (the physical world in all its multitudinous reality), and “men (sic)” (other human beings). Buber recognizes the inescapability of society/culture with which we begin although we do not end there (see Chapter 5, “Freedom All Too Human” chapter for more on this). As such, given this communion, we are never pure malleability, but we also cannot simply bow to the pressure to not know this pure infinite possibility. As Baldwin wrote, “I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am, also, much more than that. So are we all.” This statement is the essence of what Levinas wrote (the radical alterity of the Other grounded in the fact that I can never know the Other) but couched in dialectical terms: the labels that are applied to me (and I accept) versus a-person-without-any-particular-labels. The tension between these dialectical partners tinges every moment of our lives. [W]ith my beginnings … I was trying to locate myself within a specific inheritance and to use that inheritance, precisely, to claim the birthright from which that inheritance had so brutally and specifically excluded me. (Baldwin, p. 161)

Here is the recognition of politics and an unjust society that would exclude Baldwin from a birthright that, as a human being, was his but society would not allow it to be so. In Baldwin’s essay “A Question of Identity” Baldwin speaks to what is necessary to begin to recognize identity and the deficiencies of society.

Introduction: A Dialectic of Identity and Self

179

It is really quite impossible to be affirmative about anything which one refuses to question; one is doomed to remain inarticulate about anything which one hasn’t, by an act of the imagination, made one’s own. (Baldwin, 2012b, p. 133)

This point is continuously made in this book: we cannot affirm what we value if we do not also question it. It is in the questioning of it that it becomes “one’s own.” And to question is to perform an “act of imagination” which is also what I am asserting, especially in Chapter 4, “Wild Imagination.” The dance program described in this chapter was designed, in part, to offer students the opportunity to think about themselves without social constraints as the leading edge of their considerations. What of the context within which this program occurred? This context is a racial context. The Durham City, NC school system, at the time, used a busing system. While neighborhood schools no longer existed, many of the schools seemed to be, still, dominantly white or black. The western half of the city was primarily a white community with almost exclusively white elementary and middle schools. One of two high schools in Durham City, Durham High School, was an historically dominantly white school, although by the time of this program, there were more black students than there had previously been when it was known as the white school. The eastern half of the city was predominantly black and all the schools on that side of town were black. Hillside High School, known as the Black high school and, at the time of this project continued to be almost 100% Black, was an excellent high school of which its community was proud. At the post-secondary level, Duke University was in the western half of Durham City. In the process of moving to Durham to teach at Duke University, while riding the train from NYC to Raleigh, NC, I was asked by an elderly white female passenger where I was headed. When I told her Durham to teach at Duke University, she responded in her light southern drawl, “Oh, that Yankee school.” Within Durham, Duke was not seen as part of the southern community. Nevertheless, it was in the white part of the city. North Carolina Central University, an HBCU, was in the eastern half of the city. Altogether, this was a highly segregated city by geography with a long history of racial divide despite attempts to at least integrate the public school system. Here is one example of how race was a pervasive, if often not acknowledged, feature of life in Durham. In 1989 the state legislature, declaring it would no longer fund more than one school district per county (North Carolina has 100 counties), mandated that Durham County (which included Durham City and Durham County as separate political entities with separate school systems) merge its two school systems. Demographically Durham City was approximately 70% Black and 30% white and Durham County was its exact opposite, 30% Black and 70% white. While merger had been discussed for years, nothing had happened. When the state legislature passed its mandate into law, the racism that always existed quietly burst onto the public scene. The two private schools in the county, Durham Academy and Duke School (not affiliated with Duke university), both primarily white schools, suddenly saw an explosion of white applicants and both schools launched upon years long building programs and the creation of new campuses. The merged public systems became “fully integrated” but became predominantly Black schools. The letters to the editor

180

8 Identity, Self, and Liberation

in the Durham Herald (the newspaper of record for the county) were filled with veiled and not-so-veiled racist complaints about the merger. A city and county that had prided themselves on peace between the races (even a liberal town as, at the time it had a white mayor who had been supported by the Committee of the Affairs of Black People, the powerful group that had rarely supported a white candidate) was exposed as being based upon racist attitudes and desired policies. Race and racism have held a pervasive presence in the places I have called home (Princeton, NJ and Durham, NC). Princeton was equally geographically divided, with many Black families living in one district in Princeton Borough (the original town of Princeton) and the outer area, Princeton Township, being more white than Black. Our one high school was integrated by dint of being the only high school. I was taught, from an early age and family politics, that none of us can write ourselves out of the story of race and racism, primarily because the U.S. (politically and economically) was founded on the enslavement of people brought to this continent from the African continent for the sole purpose of enslaving them and supporting an economy, society, and politics which only privileged “white” people. The history of “whiteness” is a challenging one: How the Irish Became White (Ignatiev, 1995) and How Jews Became White Folks (Brodkin, 1998) are two studies chronicling the transformation of two groups originally not considered white and, therefore, not allowed to have access to the halls of power, the marketplace of wealth, or the “goods” of the privileged white society but now were reimagined as “white” although always still seen, within the culture, with some suspicion. All this information may imply that I would have wanted to explicitly feature, in the program I created, race in the student’s lives as the featured theme of the program. The “liberation” in the title might “naturally” be an expression of social justice pedagogy since race was so central to the community as an inescapable fact so as to be the main fulcrum of their lives. But I didn’t see it that way. In fact, I didn’t see it anyway. I saw these students as individuals who could explore their world on whatever terms they chose through motion without immediately or directly implicating race as the sole meaningful fulcrum of their lives. I saw the program I provided as a place for people to reimagine themselves in whatever way they chose or, as I put it above, “to think about themselves without social constraints as the leading edge of their considerations.” While race, as a state of social life, was not explicitly excluded from the dance work if the learners so chose, in terms of the practices and actions we took, I did not see race or society as necessary themes of the work. The program was about supporting the learners in finding ways to explore and reimagine themselves as persons-with-potentials of which they had not been aware. Exploration of life became a possibility for any direction. As you will see, other options they might have pursued make race the dominant theme of their dance lives as well as their lives. Why offer something that didn’t emphasize their racial identities? Underneath this reimagining themselves as persons-with-potentials lies the dialectic of race/no particular label. In line with Chapter 3, “Dialectical Unlearning,” we are raced but, also, not raced. We are, at the outset, beings with no particular label. To be clearer, I might have written “human” instead of “no particular label” over against “race”

Introduction: A Dialectic of Identity and Self

181

but, “human” is, itself, a label. “Human” doesn’t provide the dialectical partner to this label. To be dialectical we must insist on keeping both “race” (substitute “ethnicity,” “gender,” “sex,” among many possible labels) and “no particular label” in play simultaneously. In so doing, we recognize the artificiality of all labels. At the same time, we recognize the social power of labels but within the dialectic we recognize the ways in which we can reimagine ourselves. More must be said about the function of labels. The issue of labels appears in Chapter 5, “Freedom All Too Human,” in which I briefly present Emmanuel Levinas’ work on ethics. Labels work to locate the world for us as a storehouse of possibly useful elements out of which we may each, individually, develop a self, a presence in the world. This is certainly the function of “race” both for good and ill, as we know in our highly racialized, systemically racist society. For Levinas, these acts are acts of “totalization”: by attaching a label to a person we treat the label as if it speaks for the whole of the person. This echoes Baldwin’s concerns about his “birthright” of expansiveness. At the same time, and this reflects Baldwin’s understanding of the play of his inheritance as a Black man, the label “race” can provide a place in the world in a community that cares for that person. It can also make the world a place of danger, as Baldwin also notes in almost all his writings, as the larger community views the person with multiple suspicions based on nothing but the label which stands between that person and those viewing the person. The “race” label, as with any label but maybe with more malignancy, can make opaque the complexity of the person such that, for example, Black women with a great gift for mathematics (the Black women mathematicians of NASA memorialized in the film “Hidden Figures”), are not accepted for their mathematical ability due merely to their skin color as well as their gender. There is another dimension to this chapter already mentioned by Baldwin: imagination. Putting forth the idea of creativity and imagination which is not built on racial identity or racial issues, I was not asking my students to use “race” as a conscious self-narrative in their art endeavors. If we are to discover our identities as plenitudes of many potentials, then insisting on race as the consensus and conscious motivator of artistic action might have interfered with a discovery of the messiness of identity. Additionally, were I to have made race explicitly the theme of the program, we might have been moved toward dance forms typically associated with Black communities (break dancing, hip-hop, African forms of dance, approaches to dance already pioneered by Black choreographers). I wanted to avoid this to open the life of dance to all possible movements and motions. Pre-made forms already direct attention in ways that constrict possibilities rather than opening them up. This connects with the chapters on imagination (Chapter 4, “Wild Imagination and the Critical Project” especially) in which imagination is invoked as “free from” initial strictures that automatically, consciously guide the play of imagination in particular directions. This is an imagination that is practiced by the art-maker (or curriculum-maker) and unspooled through a creative process (described in one way, not the only way, in Chapter 6, “Pure Imagination and Freedom”) that honors this “free play” of body and mind. None of what I have discussed makes this work non-political. As noted in Chapter 4 politics is not necessarily about the redress of particular harms. Politics

182

8 Identity, Self, and Liberation

is about the play of power in our lives and, since, power exists in many forms and venues, even this seemingly non-political dance program is, in a subtle but pervasive way, political. In fact, the students took political power into their own hands in this program as they made requests for the program outside of the norms of school life and succeeded at getting the program they wanted. What could be more political than that? To invoke “free play” is to invoke freedom or liberation as core to the play of imagination. As already written, above, about communion with nature, destiny, and other people, we must remember that it is linked to freedom and that freedom is found in the intimate dialogic relationship described by Buber. When Buber describes the art teacher who teaches for freedom (see Chapter 6, “Pure Imagination and Freedom,” for more detail on this), the teacher presents the learner with an object. It doesn’t matter what object is chosen. All objects provide the opportunity for interaction without beliefs about the proper way to interact with that object. As each learner encounters the object with an openness toward the object, rather than pre-ordained understandings, the learner finds her/himself in the object. In finding her/himself in the object, s/he might discover new potentials for her/himself of which s/he was not aware. Pre-ordained attitudes toward an object, even race, limit the possibilities of discovering something new for the one who encounters. The students in this dance program, through their motional actions, released themselves to imagine the real lives they were living and expressing through the bodily, emotional actions of their dance. We did not name them in the usual sociological ways. They might not have even understood them as expressions of their daily lives. The meaning of this dance might not have been explicitly clear. The point wasn’t to find fixes to life’s issues or problems. The point was to find something in themselves that didn’t need explaining. Dance, the experience of moving without explicit meanings, was the liberation into possible new directions of which none of us can know the outcomes. So, rather than make “race” an explicit theme of the work I worked to help the learners encounter themselves only as movers. In that context, they encounter “nature” (their bodies) but, inevitably, with their traditions for how can they not move without some reference to the bodily movement within their community and with other people since they encountered dancing with others? It is in these senses that freedom is explored in this chapter. This chapter is underlain by multiple ideas/discussions presented throughout this book. It plays out the ideas of identity, freedom, imagination, and ethics without directly pointing to them. This is “mosaical thinking” in action.

Aesthetics, Living Aesthetically, and Social Class/Race Let us begin by locating what is meant by “aesthetics” in its cultural context in the West and explore how it is a lived experience in many contexts not conventionally associated with aesthetics. “Aesthetics” derives from the Greek and means “sense perception or sensation” and is, in philosophy, “the study of what is immediately

Aesthetics, Living Aesthetically, and Social Class/Race

183

pleasing to our visual or auditory perception or to our imagination” as well as “the study of the nature of beauty.” More conventionally, it is usually associated with the arts and is the study of “taste and criticism in the creative and performing arts” (Mautner, 1997, p. 8). The basic aesthetics questions are “What is beauty?” and “What is imagination and how does it function?” and, for the arts, the sub-questions are, for instance, “How do the arts deal with beauty?”, “What is art?” and, “What are the criteria for assessing the quality of a specific work of art.” The art questions, and their answers, are designed to help viewers of art understand art and for artists to ground their practices in an intelligible understanding of what they are trying to accomplish. The answers to these questions have, of course, varied over the centuries according to differing social and political contexts. (See Wolff, 1981, and Eagleton, 1990, for more on the relation between social context, aesthetics, and art.) The questions of beauty and sensation, however, are not restricted to the arts. For instance, to the degree that people attend to their likes and dislikes in personal style in clothing, housing, furnishings, food, etc., and attend to ways of being with others (see Goffman’s work, 1959, on presentation of self in everyday life for a way to think about this), to that extent they are concerned with beauty, sensation, and sensual awareness and can be said to be “living aesthetically.” Conventionally, today, people make their aesthetic choices with a consumerist consciousness, connecting beauty and sensation with buying the right food, clothing, makeup, movies, music, books, and so forth, in order to feel as if they are living the beautiful life, leading to improving their chances at success in life. Such consumerism is not confined to any one social class. For each social class people are known by what they wear, where they live, what vehicle they drive, what kind of food they eat, what kind of entertainment they consume, and they establish public identities in terms of how particular goods bestow particular social status connecting them to a particular community. In all of this, aesthetics is at work. “Beauty,” the fundamental aesthetic concern, informs the above-mentioned choices. When people choose to dress in a certain way, that choice is meant to convey (and feel) beautiful, not necessarily in any conventional sense of “beauty” but in the sense that their particular community would see as “beautiful.” However, people do not, generally, connect their choices for becoming beautiful with aesthetics. Rather, as already noted, they construe aesthetics and art to be synonymous and outside the realm of their daily lives. In understanding art and beauty as intimately connected, art is not understood as merely “art” but, as, rather, high art (see Hebert Gans’, 1974, distinction between popular culture and high culture) which represents real beauty and is part of what Raymond Williams termed the “selective tradition” (Williams, 1973). This “high art” is seen as “real art” which is consumed by those who occupy the power centers of society as they attend symphonies, theater, museums, and so forth, filling their lives with socially sanctioned beauty. It is not necessarily the case that such consumers always like “high art,” but it is with “high art” that they are most associated. It is the rich who pay millions for a Van Gogh painting, who attend charity functions for the opera and symphony, who pay large sums to attend symphony, opera, and theatrical productions and who attend museum and gallery openings. These individuals subscribe to the aesthetic of the selective tradition and have access to and, supposedly, appreciation of it. Such subscription sanctions them

184

8 Identity, Self, and Liberation

as cultured and, in turn, as natural wielders of social power. On the other side of culture is Gans’ “popular culture” designation. This tacitly references people who value country-western music, television game shows, soap opera, MTV, hip-hop culture, rock-and-roll and the like and who purchase paintings of dogs playing cards, of bucolic fields, of clowns and of doe-eyed children and enjoy painted velvet paintings. These people are members of the middle and working classes and they do not identify their interests as “the arts,” they do not subscribe to the value of aesthetics in their lives and, while they enjoy their own form of beauty, they don’t believe that it is beautiful in the aesthetics sense; thus, their predilections have a distinctly declassé flavor, even to them. The distinction between what is really art (really beautiful) and what is neither art nor beautiful is based on a class definition of art and beauty. Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction (1984) explicitly laid out this terrain as he explored the different social classes’ view of what it means to have “good taste” and ably showed the social structures that resulted in the working-class membership viewing itself as having no aesthetic taste but enjoying its lack since the “having of social taste” was onerous. Nevertheless, it should be understood that the working class in that study and the working class and working poor in urban settings (and the lower middle class) do not lack aesthetics but possess, rather, a certain view of the value and meaning of aesthetics cultivated throughout society such that their hegemonized consciousness (more of hegemony later in this chapter) labels their taste as invalid or illegitimate as they subscribe to the inferiority of their own taste. The selective tradition which performs this labeling, is found in school rules and curricula which maintain and nurture the high/low culture distinction, and which are used to distribute valued school goods (students who appreciate high art are more likely to receive better teaching and better curricula) which, in turn, are used to distribute social goods. The elite class, who most benefit from such thinking, and whose representatives (school administrators and faculty) administer this thinking, view popular culture as dangerous and in need of being eliminated from school experience. In this way the selective tradition is not only the most valued tradition but, also, the only tradition of real value. Getting more specific about the relation between aesthetic living, popular culture, and danger, African-American children living in or around urban settings have developed specific aesthetics in terms of clothing and music which have now become part of the larger cultural norm. Some assign the term “ghetto culture” to these clothing and music tastes which are also known as “hip-hop style.” Succinctly, the hip-hop aesthetic is associated, by the larger society, with criminality, with encouraging antiauthority attitudes and with a highly sexualized life. For those who wear this clothing and listen to the music, these terms are not necessarily terms of opprobrium. They wear the clothing and listen to the music, in part, to signal an identity of which they approve, and which gives them membership in a particular community. I recall a colleague at a weekend long AERA program meeting going out one evening to see some college friends. He was dressed in this style whereas during the day’s meetings he had been dressed in academic casual. He explained that his friends expected him to dress like this. They would think he had abandoned them if he dressed as he had during the daytime meetings. In both cases he was identity signaling for different

Aesthetics, Living Aesthetically, and Social Class/Race

185

communities. Who was the “real” person was not apparent. Of course, the idea of a “real person” is non-starter in this discussion. This colleague had a self upon which he hung the various “garments” of identities. His “self” was that protean self who could adopt various guises in the world. He was both this “self” and these identities. More generally, for the moment suffice it to indicate that this ghetto culture, hip-hop culture is accepted by a particular community but is positioned in the larger society as representing social danger (although this “ghetto” culture has now become a dominant version of how to live throughout multiple social sectors). The intersection of the hip-hop aesthetic with schools can illustrate how the dominant authorities in society deal with such an aesthetic. Schools view this culture as lacking social propriety and the ability to help young people succeed in life. This translates, in schools, into, for instance, the banning of wearing baseball caps turned to the side and to the banning of certain clothing. An excellent example of this occurred in a Scottsdale, AZ school in 2004 where an outstanding African-American student, Marlon Morgan (nominated for Youth of the Year by his local Boys and Girls Club, a long-time volunteer at the Club, editor of the sports section of his school newspaper, and a fine student) was arrested on campus by police for wearing his hat sideways after he refused the order by the campus security guards to turn it forward and refused to go to the Assistant Principal’s office, pointing out that other youths (white) were wearing their hats sideways and weren’t being asked to change. He was, subsequently jailed for disorderly conduct, insubordination to police and trespassing (he was eating lunch in his school cafeteria) and suspended for three days from school. When he protested his differential treatment, the school and district officials replied that wearing his hat in that way was a sign of disrespect for authority (he broke the school dress code) and of being a gang-banger (this despite much evidence to the contrary). The NAACP became involved, and his mother protested, eventually getting his suspension shortened to one day. Then, at the end of the school year a picture appeared in the student paper with him and another AfricanAmerican student who was wearing their hats sideways. The school administration seized all the newspapers, had the newspaper staff (including Marlon, the incoming sports editor for 2004–2005) tear out the picture from all the copies and they would have done the same for the yearbook (from which the picture was taken) if it hadn’t been too costly to produce new yearbooks (Bittner, 2004a, 2004b; Ryman & Bittner, 2004). We may ask why the administration of the school was so adamant in their policy and why the policy existed in the first place. Clearly, they had labeled an aesthetic choice subversive and dangerous and even though an upstanding citizen of their school was wearing the clothing, he was accused of potentially provoking violence and danger. Obviously, the school administration and school district (who is beholden, through the governing board membership and the most powerful voices speaking out at board meetings, to the power elites in the community) believe in the power of an aesthetic to be resonant with a deep consciousness that pervades all actions. Marlon was seen to be potentially violent and dangerous even though he had never shown signs of such behavior. Thus, his community’s aesthetic was banned from the school (even though white students were wearing hats in the same

186

8 Identity, Self, and Liberation

fashion but were not harassed). Beyond this specific set of incidents, while school people continue to condemn the hip-hop aesthetic (the school has maintained its dress code policies), they also do not make “proper” aesthetics a central part of the curriculum. In the present environment of high stakes testing, the arts are usually the first programs eliminated from schools. Aesthetics is clearly seen as a frill for innercity children living in or near poverty, too rarified to be useful to people living in difficult economic, service-poor, lack of accesses to social resources settings. These children need to pass the basic academics testing program before money can be devoted to the arts in the schools. In short, the community’s aesthetics are kept out of the school, but aesthetics of any kind is also not present in the curriculum. In the face of these kinds of issues and arguments around aesthetics for inner-city children, how can we address developing an “aesthetic consciousness” in an urban setting? One obvious answer is to break down the barriers between the students’ everyday lives and school life. In this case, allow hip-hop culture to be in the schools, acknowledging it as a legitimate form of aesthetic life. Use it as one base for developing art and art “appreciation.” Open the canon to critique. In these ways, the community’s culture becomes the basis for curriculum rather than adjunct or ignored. Another approach focuses not on popular culture but on using the artmaking to explore the sensual aspects of life as markers of meaning in terms of how we are living our present lives. Rather than inculcate people with the knowledge of what is valued and what is not (a focus on high art) people make art to discover the life and beauty in their lives. Through such a mode of education, art might become critically useful and not just “a document of barbarity” (Benjamin, 1986, p. 682), institutionalizing the privilege of some on the backs of the massive others. Larger issues of life can be explored which can, even, critique how art is bought and sold by those with the wealth and power. My task is, now, to develop this reasoning for liberation education through a more concrete and detailed discussion of, first, the relation between identity politics and possible dance resources and then, through describing/discussing my project within the middle school.

Dance Resources for the African-American Community: Variety Within Identity Politics What are the possible dance resources that would be available for use in the school of this program? Some of the resources to be discussed below were, in fact, not available to the students, but because they exist in the world, they might have been available and are, therefore, pertinent to the discussion. One point should be made about “identity politics” as a guide to curriculum thinking. Such politics already exists through the above-mentioned “selective tradition” that informs the school curriculum, a tradition redolent with white privilege. “African-American” is the racially marked condition of unmarked “whiteness” (to borrow the discourse analysis idea that being unmarked is the power position) and curriculum decisions are already made with whiteness tacitly

Dance Resources for the African-American Community: Variety …

187

in mind. To focus on African-American dance artists, as such, is to honor a tradition in the dance art absent from school life (except for the first species of identity politics dance art which I shall discuss) but which has a great deal to offer. Ironically, in thinking of identity politics and dance, African-American dance artists are no more monolithic than White dance artists and this variety tells us that identity politics is not a neat and easily bounded term. Thus, even though some African-American artists do not choose to make art in reference to their racial/ethnic identity, they are yet marked by their status by others (reviewers, audiences, funding agencies). There is no escaping race in the U.S. One of the resources directly available to the children in Durham was a local dance company, headed by Chuck Davis, a dancer who had lived in NYC prior to moving to Durham, originally through the auspices of the American Dance Festival and then deciding to take up permanent residence there and create a dance company. Mr. Davis had, for many years, taught for the NEA through their “Dancers in Schools” program and was very experienced working with young people in schools. The company he established in Durham focused on performing dances of Africa and on teaching these dances in workshops and through outreach work into schools. He represented that segment of the African-American community who want to vivify the ancestry of today’s African-Americans, strengthening the individual’s sense of personal value, by focusing on who they were, as various peoples, prior to their imprisonment in Africa and subsequent enslavement within the U.S. Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s various projects (his TV series touring Africa and his Encyclopedia Africana) are other examples of this movement. Mr. Davis’s company represented the only specifically African-American dance resource available to the community. Such dance fits easily, as an adjunct, occasional experience, within school settings because it is exotic in a safe manner (does not challenge society’s dominant everyday mores) and, yet, distant from everyday life without highlighting anything about everyday life. In these ways it poses no danger of altering that everyday life. An exploration of the concept of “political hegemony” makes clearer what is meant by “poses no danger.” Raymond Williams (1973), wrote of “political hegemony” as that situation, in all political states, in which power is always at stake. There is a group in power whose main goal is to maintain power. Such maintenance happens in one of two ways: brute force or persuasion as to the goodness of the present political arrangement. Dictatorships of many varieties primarily deploy brute force (interior secret police, “justice” systems, and prisons) with some adjunct propaganda to persuade people of the goodness of the situation. Other states, which are ostensibly not dictatorships, rely almost exclusively on persuasion to maintain the power arrangements. In these latter cases, the group in power must constantly find ways of diverting attention from the power structure that only favors that group through accessing the consciousness of the people. This constancy is necessary because people live lives that appear to be free to improvise and change how life is lived. This presents a challenge to the power group to constantly be aware of trends and new ideas that may pose a threat to the power group’s ascendancy over society. They must respond to such threats through a number of means: the promotion of what Williams termed

188

8 Identity, Self, and Liberation

“residual culture,” the acceptance, within bounds, of what Williams termed “alternative culture,” and how to control and weaken what Williams termed “oppositional culture.” This last culture poses the greatest threat and is usually met with some sort of legalistic or even brute force control to lessen its ability to alter the social structure. When Horkheimer and Adorno wrote The Dialectic of the Enlightenment (1987) they identified specific social institutions (the entertainment industry in all its forms (including, today, sports), education, the media in all its forms) who had multiple tasks. They might provide specific messages of compliance and acceptance. They might provide distractions from the serious problems of society, making these distractions more attractive than the threatening possibilities. Or they might domesticate threats by folding them into acceptable culture. In all cases, the task was to provide ways of thinking about or ignoring the situation that threatened the power of the power group. All of this can be summarized as “culture work,” teaching using cultural encounters to manipulate thinking and being. One specific mode of manipulation identified by Williams addresses the dance of Chuck Davis: “residual culture.” Williams wrote that “[r]esidual culture [derives from] … some previous social formation” (p. 26). This cultural formation is found so attractive by some that it becomes their almost exclusive focus of attention and energy. Such residual cultures distract from thinking about contemporary society’s inequities as they remain lodged in a nostalgic past. They become “incorporated” into society, meaning they become accepted by mainstream society as a welcome addition to social life without anyone noticing their function to distract. Residual cultures never function in what Williams might term “real oppositions” to the present circumstances; they do not call attention to the current inequitable situation as people pour substantial amounts of their energies in these residual activities. As Williams puts it, these residual cultures “do not in practice go beyond the limits of the central effective and dominant definitions” of proper social life. They do not trouble the present dominant way of living and yet allow people to feel they are finding an authentic voice and life. No matter that this authentic voice and life does not alter the overarching structure of society or bring it into view. Residual cultures function to pacify in exactly the way a child’s pacifier quiets her/his discomfort. Contrast this with what Williams terms “alternative” activities. Alternative activities do not pacify but, rather, present alternative ways of living that call into question the present social arrangements by finding the given situation to be inadequate for the ends the practitioners seek. These alternatives propose “a different way to live and [the practitioners] want to change the society in [their] light” (p. 27). Mr. Davis’ dance functioned as residual culture. Mr. Davis’ work took students back to times that were their distant heritage but had nothing to do with today’s life. His work did not call attention to the play of race or any other social disjunctures, thus was easy to embrace and celebrate. We must be dialectically clear about this idea of residual culture. In line with the discussion in Chapter 3 (Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom) “false consciousness and first impressions” section, while it is possible to read Chuck Davis’ work negatively as “residual culture,” it is also important to see that for Davis and for others, this reality of heritage is a grounding in a real world that gives power and meaning to their present lives. Seana Lowe (2001) night support this interpretation

Dance Resources for the African-American Community: Variety …

189

of Davis’ work as she refers to using the arts “to ameliorate social problems and to promote healthy communities. In particular … to address social issues … a recognition of the power of art to effect individual and social change … its ability to compel changes in individual identity … to develop and express collective identity, to build community, and to address community problems.” (p. 457) She may be referencing art that directly deals with specific social problems, but her ideas do support Davis’ work, if it works toward building a strong community. It may be that Davis’ work does not obviously alter the conditions of their lives, the sense of connection and place in the world might strengthen the sense of self needed to work for social change to improve the circumstances of life. Therefore, one first impression may be that this work changes nothing but, given the impetus of building self as connected to a proud heritage, it is possible that Davis’ and his followers’ reading of the world is the correct one for building a strong community that can come together to advocate for what is necessary. However, the other “first impression” of a safety valve for social unrest may also be correct if either practitioners do not turn their energies to social change out of their experiences in this dance practice, resting peacefully in the joy of this work or, if that for which they advocate is so predicated on present-day values, that they cannot use this dance practice to rethink the whole basis for social life. That is, it might be possible to understand the kind of community fostered in the actual dances themselves providing real alternatives to present-day arrangements. And we must question what constitutes social change. There is no one version of social change that is correct. In sum, this dialectical critique of Davis and all such practices remains an open, unanswered set of questions as to what are its outcomes for social life. A second dance approach to African-American experience is exemplified in the work of Katherine Dunham and poses the possibility of William’s “alternative” vision. Dunham’s approach to aesthetics and the African-American community had a strong anthropological cast (Dunham held a Ph.D. in anthropology) as the works that were produced were highly influenced by anthropological study of various Black cultures, with an especial focus on Haitian culture. Her study of the movement of these cultures was mixed with ballet and modern dance to produce a distinctive approach to movement that became known as the Katherine Dunham technique. This technique was rendered choreographically into spectacular theater which Ms. Dunham characterized as “revues.” She did not intend to reproduce “authenticity” in Davis’s way, so much as communicate about culture through her art. She also differed from Davis in that at the time she was choreographing for and touring with her company (in the 40s, 50s, and 60s) her dance was celebrated for its sensuality and aliveness but also, sometimes, branded as lascivious and teetering on the brink of obscenity. In this dimension her work, unlike Chuck Davis’s, did provide a potentially subversive calling attention to dimensions of life the dominant culture would rather not have highlighted. While she became world-renowned and celebrated, her sensual work was seen as dangerous in its frank portrayal of such sensuality. As with Davis’s heritage approach, Dunham invigorated a positive identity through making aesthetically legitimate the sensual life (Dunham Biography, n.d.; Harman, 1974). What makes Dunham a possible candidate for “alternative” is the sensuality of her

190

8 Identity, Self, and Liberation

work in opposition to the Protestant values of restraint, mind over body, and politeness. Her work posed a direct threat to the reigning ethos and was treated with less public support, in her time, than Davis’ work in the Durham community and at Brooklyn Academy of Music where his annual celebration of African inspired dance was held. Despite any attempts to negate Dunham’s influence, she settled in East St. Louis, teaching classes, and inspiring the local community, and retained a valued name among the professional dance community. What are we to make of this criticism of Dunham, that its sensuality was a disqualifier for elevation to widespread support? In John Cuddihy’s (1976) work he asks the question, why were the three most influential thinkers of the twentieth century all Jewish (Freud, Marx, and Levi-Strauss). Cuddihy’s answer is that while Jews were generally seemingly assimilated into Protestant Western European society, these three thinkers saw below the surface of Protestant civility (and its insistence on composure and quietude). They found a seething physicality and nature below the surface of such civility (Freud), a constant class struggle below the surface of seemingly social comity (Marx) and an equivalent culture found in so-called primitive cultures whose sophistication parallels contemporary Protestant culture (LeviStrauss). These three thinkers revealed the hidden and rejected side of humanity. So, too, Dunham only revealed what is true for all beings: a sensual nature that releases physical passions for the betterment and pursuit of the continuation of life. She revealed what, in the end, the socially powerful did not want to confront, that we are all basically animals, embodied sensual beings. This “alternative,” to use Williams’ term, needed to be isolated from mainstream culture if the elite members of culture were to retain their power. How is this accomplished? It works through particular cultural groundings. This culture is, in part, built upon the idea that mind is preeminent over body and that body would only destroy the advances enjoyed by contemporary society. Therefore, Dunham’s work had to be sidelined. But in keeping with hegemonic practice, this sidelining could not appear to be one overt repression. Hegemony works at the level of consciousness, finding ways to elevate what it wants elevated and delegitimate what it wants delegitimated to maintain power but not act as if it is doing so. This requires that the reduction of some activities must appear to be reasonable and correct based on contemporary logic (such as mind over body) in order to not notice that something that is potentially dangerous has been suppressed or, at least, diminished in its influence. Further, hegemonic forces would not want to completely eliminate such practices for they do act, as already stated, as a siphon for rebellious energy into relatively safe venues while allowing the practitioners to feel as if they are “making a difference.” This analysis must take care, as with examining Davis’ work, that Dunham’s work in East St. Louis must be examined for the substantive positive differences it has made in the lives of the people there and whether those differences eventuated in social change and whether or not that social change is what is sought. As with the discussion of Davis, above, these are open, unanswered questions as to the efficacy for social change and what kind of change is engendered. There is no doubt that both Davis and Dunham sought social change. The question is: what sort of change and how did it connect to larger social issues such as the achievement of life as a human achievement or an achievement

Dance Resources for the African-American Community: Variety …

191

of particular social segments represented in those achievements. As with thinking about Davis, we must consider what constitutes social change through Dunham’s work. What did she consider social change in her work and how can we examine the basis for her thinking? We must always be careful to moderate our thinking by understanding the multiple outcomes and considerations at play in any one act. There is a second way to view the above argument about Dunham. We cannot predict what such dancing might bring out in the dancer, the choreographer, and the audience. Much of modern dance during the mid-twentieth century is a highly restrictive motional vocabulary. The two dominant approaches to dance in the middle half of the twentieth century were the Graham technique and the Doris HumphreyCharles Weidman technique. Specifically, Martha Graham’s work was a difficult, almost tortuous motional vocabulary built on contraction and release of the center of the body into highly defined bodily shapes and motion. The Humphrey-Weidman approach was based on fall and recovery in which all movement is predicated on the body falling in various ways but being caught in the fall toward the next motion, recovering into a new state. It is not that these are not sensual, but they are not about sensuality. They are, in this sense, “cool” versus the warmth of Dunham’s work. Everything is stylized in a way that does not read as sensual. The work is based on specific motional vocabulary that can be understood as coolly intellectual. Dunham reads as celebrating the sensual. (This coordinates well with the mind/body split.) It is possible that an approach to dance grounded in preset motional vocabulary is similar to the scientist who enters work with questions already in mind and only seeks confirmation of what is already known. It is possible that the kind of openness to what will happen, not grounded in mind but grounded in body, may reveal dimensions of life not predictable. In short, it is possible that Dunham’s sensuality also presented a less-controlled, more open and therefore less predictable outcome. (Such unpredictability is central to the approach to dance I pursued in my own work and with the students in the project discussed below.) This makes Dunham not so much a controlled entity for the “letting off of steam” in the hegemonic scheme as a possible opening to new ways of thinking and doing. Moving away from a heritage perspective, the focus shifts to celebrating the strength and vitality of African-American culture here in the U.S. This is exemplified by the work of Alvin Ailey who thematically explored “cultural” aspects of AfricanAmerican life through such signature works as “Cry” (dealing with a Black woman’s grief), “Revelations” (Ailey’s tribute to the African-American cultural heritage), and solo studies of various great African-American musicians. Ailey derived his movement vocabulary and dance technique from Lester Horton, a white maverick choreographer working in LA rather than NYC, who was the first choreographer to thoroughly integrate a dance company. Horton’s choreography took on social justice issues of the time, in modern dance, when such “topics” were rarely, if at all, explored. When Ailey moved to NYC, he brought not only Horton’s approach to movement and dance training, but a dedication to exploring the Black experience in the U.S. This doesn’t mean that Ailey made protest art. It remains within the “residual culture” domain as it was never focused on difficult topics. Rather, “he founded Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater to carry out his vision of a company dedicated

192

8 Identity, Self, and Liberation

to enriching the American modern dance heritage and preserving the uniqueness of the African-American cultural experience” (https://www.alvinailey.org). In this Ailey transformed modern dance and dance in general, and brought along a vibrant, multicultural dance company as his contribution to dance. Donald McKayle, another choreographer inspired by contemporary life, choreographed numerous works based on street life in the African-American community. McKayle studied with numerous central modern dance figures of his era, both Black and white. In both his and Ailey’s cases there was a slight edge to their work, but they remained well “within the lines” of accepted identity and were seen more as a celebration of life than an examination of that life. Such celebration suggests that this work never presented a dangerous alternative to be suppressed (as was attempted in the work of Dunham). It is important to note that this is not a criticism of Ailey and McKayle. Their work is acknowledged for its aesthetic power. Ailey, especially, opened avenues for other Black American dancers. His company eventually became a multiple ethnicity group. But the subject matter remained, primarily, focused on the Black experience, primarily in a nostalgic or personal register. As such it was not dissimilar to Chuck Davis’ work. All the demurrals above about the critiques of Davis hold true here as well. A fourth possible position takes a more-or-less race/ethnicity neutral stance toward dance and is exemplified by such artists as Bebe Miller and Bill T. Jones, both of whom may or may not explore what it means to be African-American. Their focus is on their life experience in many guises, and they do not draw upon anthropological understandings as a base or upon culturally explicit forms. Rather, they function from a more or less “pure” modern dance base as they are more interested in movement, music, and humanness than in speaking directly to people through conventionally legible forms (such as gospel music or dances about prostitutes in the community or the character of a jazz musician, and so forth). For instance, in a 1999 Dance Magazine review of Bebe Miller, the writer wrote, [Miller] may be creating a new genre of dance: black urban flamenco. … From the get-go, Miller directs provocative questions toward the audience. She slyly asks if anyone is looking for the gay dancers on the stage, and she wonders aloud how many times the conversation shifts toward the fact that the company director is an African American woman. Her troupe, composed of people of many colors, could be a microcosm of New York City—and she addresses her choreography toward the crazy quilt of city living. (Carman, 1999)

This reviewer reflects Miller’s simultaneous awareness of her racial status (which she has amplified in recent years through participation in public discussions of being Black in the dance world). She questions racial categories through her pastiche of references (black, urban, flamenco), and her direct acknowledgment of the salience of race in this society. She says of her interests, “Once I began to choreograph I found that I could best carry out this investigation in the company of others so I formed Bebe Miller Company in 1985 to work more reflectively, and in real dialogue. I’ve always been interested in the space between people, how telling, how specific, and how dynamic it can be. Recently I’ve been investigating new aspects of performance that involve media, text and the visual stage picture as well as the live moment. Ultimately though, it’s the visible change in the body’s action, due to whatever source, that interests me. My work depends on the permission we’re granted to reveal

Dance Resources for the African-American Community: Variety …

193

the sub-context of our interactions, and I build new dances by finding strategies to unearth that subtext. Our bodies, focus, intention and awkward grace hold all the evidence we need.” (Bebe Miller, U. of Washington website). Clearly, she does not, as with Chuck Davis, Katherine Dunham, Alvin Ailey, and Donald McKayle, actively embrace her African heritage or African-American heritage as the defining of herself or her work. In the way that she questions identity through her work, she is clearly more critical than they. In a similar example of postmodern pastiche, Bill T. Jones acknowledges publicly the influence of his Buddhist beliefs on his work. Jones has adopted the “postmodern” dance practice, drawing from ballet, a variety of modern dance vocabularies and everyday movements, put together in idiosyncratic ways that reflect his individuality rather than his consciousness as an African-American choreographer. And yet, Jones has explored the issue of being African-American in his choreography, particularly in his evening-length dance, “Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land.” He has also been deeply involved, artistically and as an activist, with the AIDS epidemic and homosexuality as issues. He creates work that is explicitly political at times but often not explicitly African-American in theme but, rather, a meditation in his own personal life. Nevertheless, Jones, as with Miller, is usually viewed by the dance community, reviewers, and the public as an AfricanAmerican choreographer, rather than just a choreographer. You could not imagine a review of a white choreographer’s work mentioning the choreographer as a “white choreographer.” As linguistics has it, that which is unmarked in discourse (such as whiteness never mentioned but African-American, Asian-American, and IndigenousAmerican always noted) is the default power position, thus “going without saying.” Not all work by these two choreographers is focused on Black issues but their work is always seen as if it is.

Identity and Power: A Middle School Modern Dance Project The project in question presents an alternative to all the above. It does not focus on race or heritage but leaves space for race and heritage to be explored in unexpected ways, thus providing a possibility of exploring freedom through acts of imagination (two of the central themes of this book) that are relevant to questions of identity. The program was sponsored by the NEA during the fall of 1981. It lasted six weeks and took place in a middle school in the eastern part of town which was populated almost exclusively by African-Americans. The school was nearly entirely AfricanAmerican although the faculty was predominantly white. Under the terms of this grant my responsibility was to teach dance to the entire school. I had all morning everyday of school and I had each class (6th, 7th, and 8th grade) for approximately 40 min twice a week. I also arranged to have a special group on Fridays who would volunteer to have an extra class. In this extra class the students would create choreography that would be presented at a school assembly at the end of the six weeks. This arrangement was not part of the original grant (which had been secured by someone else) but was central to my version of the project. I wanted young people to experience the fullness

194

8 Identity, Self, and Liberation

of bringing something from imagination to concrete fulfillment, including performing what they created. This full experience could provide a vision of their potentials as people and dancers and, potentially, act as a vehicle for liberation education. To show why this project had liberatory characteristics, I need to describe what I do when I teach dance. This work comes out of the German Expressionist tradition developed by Mary Wigman in the first part of the twentieth century and carried on by Hanya Holm and Alwin Nikolais (at whose school I studied, including studying with Holm), and Phyllis Lamhut, with whom I studied and in whose company I danced for seven years. The gist of the German Expressionist approach is a focus upon the essence of an idea or event expressed in movement, exploring, and revealing the inner state which that idea and/or event produces. The movement that is created is not obviously connected with the idea or event. For example, to make a dance dealing with poverty, one might not costume that dance in ragged clothing or portray hunger in obvious ways. Rather, movement stimulated by cultivating the inner state of “poverty” and “hunger” would become the movement for the dance; the artist is being expressive but not representational. The dance becomes “authentic” in the sense that a more direct human connection is made between inner states and ideas/events than between the idea/event and its external correlates. What emerges is movement that is authentic to the moment and its “meaning” isn’t even obvious to the choreographer. The choreographer learns something about these states as the choreography emerges. The final dance is the completion of a process that tries to stay true to the internal, inchoate state that is the basis for the motion that emerges during the choreographic process. To get to such a state the dancer/choreographer begins by cultivating pure movement potentials of her/his body. Rather than teach to an already established movement vocabulary (ballet, conventional modern dance forms, folkloric style of dances, such as Chuck Davis’s work) the dancer/choreographer is taught about the potential for any movement which the dancer/choreographer might wish to make. Initially the teaching focuses on coming to know, experientially, the movement potentials for various body parts (legs, arms, fingers, toes, face, upper body, middle torso, and lower body), how movement occupies space (close to the ground, normal level, moving into the air, and attending to how moving in directions feels), how movement occupies time (slow motion, fast motion, and time as pure duration or how long it takes to perform a movement) and about the body as sculptural shape. All of this is without reference to anything in the dancers’ daily lives. As their abilities to know their moving body are developed, attention is turned to cultivating an understanding of inner states, beginning with more obvious ones related to the emotions but, eventually, branching out into ideas and events as also having inner state responses which can be made into choreography. It is in this regard that the German expressionist tradition provides potential for freedom through an exploration of an inner life, not an outer form. Once the dancer/choreographer comes to understand abstraction and the process of extracting essences from an experience that culminates in moving from within the inner state, s/he can submit her/his daily life experience to the same process, developing new awareness of life circumstances, including the pain associated with that life. This pain, experienced in this way, might lead the person to seek the sources

Identity and Power: A Middle School Modern Dance Project

195

of the pain and do something about them, perhaps even through sharing the dances with others who can begin to connect with those life experiences. Returning to the project, the children in this middle school worked with the basic abstract vocabulary curriculum set out above. This was meant to help them develop a sense of themselves as moving beings who felt and who could, in turn, manifest feelings into movement and organize the movements to express certain states of affairs. (In this wise, they were being encouraged to experience an individuatedbodily consciousness that was not, necessarily, beholden to the conventional politics of identity manifest through conventional Black dance.) For the Friday group, we focused specifically on choreography built around the four “concepts” of body motion, space, time, and shape. While this may seem purely abstract and disconnected from their daily lives, the “content” of the inner states they explored as they created these so-called abstract dances, inevitably expressed their daily lives because whatever movements emerged from their bodies was a direct expression of that life. We did not have time to pursue this connection because the grant ran out and the school wouldn’t have considered making this project part of their regular curriculum. However, it was clear that they were expressing their daily lives in the kind of energies they employed in their movement explorations as well as in the kinds of movement they chose, albeit abstractly conceptualized and performed. Although they had never seen dance like this, they took to it immediately and strongly. It attracted their sense of inner self and the freedom to create outside of the constraints of commercialized movement vocabulary and brought to them the opportunity to think anew and in ways that amazed them (as they communicated to me). The most important “outcome” of this six-week workshop for the school was the final performance of the Friday group. Both the school people (students, teachers, administration, staff) and the young people themselves were overwhelmingly enthused by the final performance. They saw something in themselves of which they had no previous idea; it emanated from a place that was genuine and energized. It was, in fact, so energized that the Friday group asked me if I would approach the school administration about doing the performance again at a local elementary school. I agreed, approached the School administration, and secured their permission to do this performance, which we subsequently did two weeks later. This interval required more visits to the school, to rehearse for the performance as well as accompanying the students as the “artistic director” of the event to the school and teaching them, in so functioning, what it meant to perform for a public. When we performed at the elementary school, the middle schoolers were, again, greeted with great enthusiasm and pride by the students, faculty, and administration of that school. This is the more or less overtly political act I mentioned in the introduction to this chapter. What made this project significant from the point of view of developing an aesthetic consciousness that might be liberating? The participants in the special workshop designed to produce the performance found something in themselves that could be shown to others in a way that enhanced their sense of their own potentials as human beings. This could be found in both the dance itself and their more political work to be allowed to show their concert to another school. Those who participated in the “regular” classes also found something in themselves which, prior to

196

8 Identity, Self, and Liberation

this experience, they would not have valued. For instance, I insisted that everyone participate in the first two classes offered during the regular program. If, after that, someone didn’t want to participate, he or she could watch the class. One student was particularly resistant to participating. He chose to sit out after the mandatory participation. That watching didn’t last long. He came to me by the fourth class and asked to rejoin. He had seen something he wanted to do of which he hadn’t been aware. In all these senses, the students began to structure identities that brought them to know that they were people capable of something new, different, and authentic to themselves as people. Not as African-American people but just as people. In this way, the school potentially became a place in which they could develop an identity through art and the students were celebrated for their skilled performance of their own movement. In these ways, individual change occurred, and collective identity was fostered. This could only have occurred because the community they created was the context within which to experience that freedom. Community and freedom. The regard for each other across the I-It basic word into moments of inner regard, the I-Thou moments. The project was, to some degree, “radical” in that the faculty didn’t believe that these children were capable of a high level of professional investment in serious creation, and I was able to show them that they were wrong about these young people. Some teachers, when they brought their classes to study with me for a class period, either ignored what we were doing by leaving for the class time or stayed and ignored what we were doing. One teacher, in particular, actively attempted to undermine my work with the young people by doing exactly what I asked her not to do: yell at the young people when they were “misbehaving” in her eyes (I didn’t see their activity as “misbehavior” but as exuberance that held motional potential and could be channeled into dancing) and stating out loud that this program was a waste of these children’s time. With this same teacher, when during one class one young man was becoming very aggressive with another student and I intervened and was attacked, she did nothing but watch. Thus, in general, the faculty of the school was not very supportive of the project. So, although we did not enact critically social work of an explicit political type during the six weeks, we moved from a state of near total resistance by some children and faculty, tepid response by others, and active enthusiasm by some, to a place where the project was acknowledged as a great, albeit surprising (except to me) success. A new vision of these children’s future was forwarded. To this degree the work might be characterized as “radical.” In the end, the project was only potentially liberating in that there was no opportunity to pursue it further. However, we can see the potentials for such liberation in the way in which the project was carried out. First, there was no foreign vocabulary imposed upon the students (ballet, modern dance of one sort or another). I also did not allow the typical dance forms of their community to be used. Rather, we began with the basic facts about all human movement, no matter what its origin or meanings. All human movement is involved with body motion, space, time, and shape. We didn’t study a school of dance but rather a being aware of yourself as a moving human being which is basic to all dance, no matter the genre. Second, the movements came from the students. This is crucial for a curriculum initiative focused

Identity and Power: A Middle School Modern Dance Project

197

on freedom: the material for the curriculum can only relate directly to the lives of the students if the lives of the students are at the center of the curriculum. Third, a process for exploring was offered (the German expressionist tradition) which did not allow for the students to simply bring in pre-packaged versions of human movement (in the form of that present-day’s popular dance) but to explore movement itself as movement. In so doing, break dancing, for instance, might come in but it would be subjected to motional exploration as would any other movement. It would not be accepted as privileged movement to be learned and well executed if one were to consider oneself a dancer. Fourth, anyone could participate, and skill was centered not around athletic ability to perform movement but around dedication to exploration of any movement. This democratized a potentially elitist practice (only those with great, innate physical skill would ordinarily be allowed to participate and perform). Fifth, and this is where the undeveloped potential lies, had we been able to stay together for a long time, we would have worked toward the students exploring their daily lives in a more explicit manner but with abstraction/essence/expression at the heart of the exploration. In this way, they might have been able to develop dance that, when viewed as well as experienced by them, might have engaged others in conversations about their experiences of the dancing that would lead toward consideration of new ways of living in their community. Additionally, we would have worked to see every movement they made in their daily lives as having aesthetic potential. This is a species of aesthetic consciousness that transforms daily living into a daily creative act. Further, as they became sensitized to movement, they could view movements that they see in a new critical light through an aesthetic analytic lens. Lastly, in all this, their status as African-Americans would be featured in that the material for their dances would be directly related to deep inner states of being structured through their lives as African-Americans living in the U.S. It is this approach to dance, replete with aesthetic consciousness, which I believe holds the most opportunity for what I have termed “authentic” personal and social liberation education through the arts.

Postscript: Linking Pure Imagination and Freedom In this Postscript I have three ends to fulfill. The first is to lay out the ways in which what I understand about this project has evolved. Second, it is to link this chapter to the chapters on pure imagination and freedom; the third is to write of my relationships to the people and ideas forwarded in this chapter. When I first wrote this essay, I couched the project in terms of how teaching modern expressionist dance to inner-city school children might be part of a liberation educational practice. At that time, I meant, by “liberation”: people developing an “aesthetic consciousness” which provides the ability to come to grips with the emotional and physical constituents of their realities in ways that allow them to experience those realities more consciously (which are often, while living them, opaque to understanding). I didn’t stipulate what those constituents of reality were but I’m confident I had in mind repressive social structures. However, I wrote “through such

198

8 Identity, Self, and Liberation

encounters they may be able to think of new ways to be in those realities that lead to a greater range of possible lives which they might lead, lives which would not be merely a pursuit of individual happiness but understood as ensconced within a communal context of responsibility for each other.” This “communal context of responsibility for each other” is the project of “freedom” discussed in this book. This is different from “liberation” which may be understood as freedom from oppressive social structures (a central rallying point of social justice advocates). In this present work, this idea of the communal and freedom is freedom for is ever more emphasized in my mind in terms of the project that stimulated this present work. Further, thinking of Buber’s communion with destiny, connected to communion with one’s culture and the history of one’s community, it might make sense to foster their connection to traditional forms of dance growing out of their cultural “heritage.” However, from the above discussion of Baldwin and referencing of consciousness, connection with this inheritance might be problematic. For one thing, commitment to the form of dance offered in this program understood such heritage as potentially inhibiting the possibility of looking into the everydayness of their lives. That is, by focusing upon forms which, in many ways, are imported from contexts that have nothing to do with their everyday lives might steer them away from confronting their immediate lives. Instead of focusing upon official forms of dance, liberation could take place through students creating their own dances out of the immediate physicality of their own lives as the vehicle for developing aesthetic consciousness as opposed to learning forms and styles that are not direct outgrowths of their everyday lives and activities. Whatever is located within their bodies through such daily experience becomes the source of the motional material out of which they would create their art. That is, rather than teach them hip-hop or traditional African dance or break dancing or ballet or one of the many modern dance forms, teaching them to inhabit the immediacy of their bodies as motion lived becomes the motional resource for making dances. This is another way in which a liberation project for freedom is expressed not through social justice categories (which may include forms of dance associated with specific communities) but through a plethora of immediate resources processed through attention to the moment at hand. Turning to linkages with the rest of this book, the structure of the above discussed program reflects, in nascent fashion, components of the curricular structure offered in Chapter 6 on pure imagination and freedom. The initial work of the program was to introduce the students to themselves as movers in a dance sense. In this regard I offered them experiences of their own bodies as bodies moving in space, time, shape, and motions of which I asked them to take ownership. I helped them do this by encouraging them in their experiments with motion. There were set parts of a class: warm-ups that incorporated the theme of the day and motion phrases practiced that I created which were made on the spot. By not just presenting them with finished work with no explanations, but sharing with them the meanings of the activities, by having them witness an artist at work, they could see my process and I could tell them how the work wasn’t random. This, it seems to me, fulfills having them introduce themselves to their own motional potentials, asking them to join me rather than merely follow me. Allowing anyone to not participate after an

Postscript: Linking Pure Imagination and Freedom

199

initial experience allowed them to choose this for themselves rather than just another curriculum imposed upon them by the school. These ways of teaching reflect the first two stanzas of the song. Organizing the after-school component in which they could create their own work, offered them the opportunity, as with stanza three, to see the world through their own creations. And, in organizing a set of dances to be presented to their school (and, as it turns out, to their neighborhood elementary school) they had the experience of featuring themselves as artists and offering one way of putting art together that was theirs, that they owned. Throughout the program I shared my thinking with them about dance and showed them my love of dance, what dance meant to me (a way of being in the world). I showed them what it might mean to be “truly free” in that love. Of freedom, especially in the afternoon program, I offered myself as an equal who could listen and be present to their work and, especially, supporting them in taking over the program by requesting I arrange for them to take the mini-concert we had created to their old elementary school. This, to some degree, moves toward the call for a dialogical life. Lastly, I want to explore my relationships to the people discussed in this chapter as such relationships are prior to my writing any of this and it is important to understand our personal investments in our projects: the personal and the political cannot be divided. Of all the chapters in this book, this one gives me the greatest pause although, as noted at the outset, I believe that the work herein is important to pursue. I want you to see the humanity of the people I discuss. In this chapter, I question many people whose work I admire. I knew Chuck Davis personally. When I danced in the Phyllis Lamhut Dance Company, Chuck preceded us as the initial ambassador and organizer of our two-week residencies under the “Artists in Schools” NEA program. And I knew him in Durham. He was a sweet and embracing man who loved life and people. It is necessary and painful to question his work in this chapter for I also knew him to have been a man of great integrity. The necessity comes out of a need to understand what all of us are doing in our teaching, recognizing the ways in which we play into society’s demands at the cost of change in that society. However, how can we indulge ourselves in our teaching if we are not, also, honest about its limitations? There is Katherine Dunham’s work. Dunham clearly made incisions in social propriety that stung and there was pushback on her. When she installed herself in East St. Louis and opened her school there, it was not fully as a retreat from mistreatment, but it also is, likely, not the fulfillment of her work. Her choreography and her approach to movement was important and beautiful. And yet, again, we must be able to question, as Baldwin instructs us, if we are to be able to value. There is Alvin Ailey and Donald McKayle, two towering figures of modern dance and of bringing the black body fully into view. Lester Horton’s approach to movement, so basic to Ailey’s work provides a power that I want to acknowledge while also being able to question. I knew Bebe Miller in NYC as she studied at the same school as myself before going to Ohio State University to earn her MFA in Dance. I know she has in her approach some of what I speak to in this chapter. Lastly, Bill T. Jones embodies a postmodern approach to dance that does not adhere to any of the schools of dance (is not ballet or modern dance of some specific tradition or jazz but is willing to partake of a stew of influences) and I must acknowledge his

200

8 Identity, Self, and Liberation

influence within the dance world and beyond. I provide these comments at the end because I do not want my use of them to be seen as strawmen I set up to knock down. They are all real, full-blooded artists whose contributions cannot be denied or ignored. If I position them within the constellation of ideas I have put forward, this does not diminish them. We are, each, complex beings, just as Baldwin insisted. Forwarding my own approach does not come without apprehension. I recognize that I could be accused of ignoring the Black experience as found in Davis, Dunham, Ailey, McKayle, Miller, and Jones. Once again, as I asserted in this chapter, I believe the approach I used releases that experience not through direct referencing of it in ways obviously cultural or black but in the very movement moment that comes from a black body. As Baldwin taught us, we must struggle against that society which would deny us the scope of ourselves while recognizing that we began in a specific place even if we work to escape the bondage of the origination.

References Baldwin, J. (2012a). A question of identity. In Notes of a native son (pp. 127–140). Beacon Press (Kindle Edition). Baldwin, J. (2012b). Preface to the 1984 edition. In Notes of a native son (pp. 118–208). Beacon Press (Kindle Edition). Baldwin, J. (2021). The price of the ticket: Collected nonfiction: 1948–1985. Beacon Press. Benjamin, W. (1986). Theses on the philosophy of history. In H. Adams & L. Searle (Eds.), Critical theory since 1965 (pp. 680–685). University of Florida Press. Bittner, E. (2004a, March 13). Sideways ballcap lands Scottsdale teenager in jail. Arizona Republic. Bittner, E. (2004b, May 20). Saguaro’s cap controversy won’t die. Arizona Republic. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. (R. Nice, Trans.). Routledge & Kegan Paul. Brodkin, K. (1998). How Jews became white folks and what that says about race in America. Rutgers University Press. Carman, J. (1999, August). Bebe Miller Company, the Joyce Theater, a review. Dance Magazine. http://articles.com/p/articles/mi_1083/is_8_73/ai_55292594 Cuddihy, J. (1976). The ordeal of civility: Freud, Marx, Levi-Strauss and the Jewish struggle with modernity. Boston: Beacon Press. Dunham, K. (n.d.). Biography of Katherine Dunham. John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts website. http://www.kennedycenter.org/calendar/index.cfm?fuseaction=showIndividual& entitY_id=3721&source_type=A Eagleton, T. (1990). The ideology of the aesthetic. Basil Blackwell. Gans, H. J. (1974). Popular culture and high culture: An analysis and evaluation of taste. Basic Books. Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Doubleday. Hannah-Jones, N., Roper, C., Silverman, I., & Silverstein J. (2021). The 1619 Project: A new origin story. NYC: One World. Harman, T. (1974). African rhythm—American dance: A biography of Katherine Dunham. Knopf. Ignatiev, N. (1995). How the Irish became white. Routledge. Lowe, S. (2001, August). The art of community transformation. Education and Urban Society, 22(4), 457–471. Mautner, T. (Ed.). (1997). Dictionary of philosophy. Penguin Books.

References

201

Ryman, A., & Bittner, E. (2004, March 16). District will investigate handling of hat incident. Arizona Republic. Williams, R. (1973, December). Base and superstructure in Marxist cultural theory. New Left Review, 82, 3–16. Wolff, J. (1981). The social production of art. St. Martin’s Press.

Chapter 9

Reimagining Time

Time is nothing but everything, not the seconds, minutes, hours, days, years. Yet this substanceless substance, this bending and shaping, this warping, this is the way we understand our world. (Louise Erdrich, 2021, p. 193)

Abstract This chapter explores the idea of time in multiple ways, applying each to curriculum thinking. Dwayne Huebner’s work on curriculum and human beings as temporal beings is presented as a ground for the discussion and a critique of contemporary curriculum thinking. Learning to dance over time is presented as a way of understanding the play of time in curriculum. This includes time as duration, time as patience, as elasticity, and as boredom as but a few of the time modalities applied to thinking about curriculum and time. Julia Kristeva’s essay “Women’s Time” is used to explore time as gendered and to explore patriarchal culture and the idea of imagination. Imagination is discussed as a way out of the cultural cul-de-sacs of time and the patriarchy. Imagination and time are linked as core to each other. In these ways, the play of imagination in curriculum requires reimagining the potential of time for curricular experience. Keywords Time · Cursive time · Monumental time · Curriculum studies · Dance · Gender · Julia Kristeva · Dwayne Huebner [The ideas in this chapter are derived from two sources. One source is my education as a dancer during which I had to confront both the slowness and other temporal modalities within which becoming a dancer proceeded. You could not rush the discoveries of the body and had to learn how to shed bodily dispositions that inhibited the possibility of inhabiting the body in dancerly attentive ways. This is also connected to unlearning, explored in Chapter 3. My own experience of learning and unlearning can be extrapolated to the larger questions of time and education. As has been made clear in this book, the personal and the “abstract” or “theoretical” are intimately connected such that the personal is always an expression of underlying theoretical positions and the theoretical is sterile without a connection to lived experience. A second way of thinking about time is grounded in Julia Kristeva’s “Women’s Time” © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 D. S. Blumenfeld-Jones, Reimagining Curriculum Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9877-4_9

203

204

9 Reimagining Time

essay. This essay locates time as a cultural artifact grounded in gendered and patriarchal contexts. Kristeva’s distinction between cursive time (culturally masculine) and monumental time (culturally feminine) becomes a way of understanding both the kind of time discussed in my own experience as a dancer and the ways in which curriculum is constantly imbricated with time. These two sources provide the bedrock analysis of this chapter.]

Introduction: The Multiplicity of Time Time is an abstraction. At least, time is an abstraction when we treat it as an object we can observe. For instance, we may believe that when we look at a clock to gauge movement over “time” (5 min have passed, time to turn the heat down on the pot) we are observing something that has happened (5 min have passed). But this image of time is an illusion. It is an illusion in that, depending on what the 5 min represent, that specific package of time may feel very long or extremely short, very urgent or onerous, very sad or joyous, all dimensions which affect our next decisions, as opposed to clock time which cannot be used to make decisions about our lives. Our personal experience of time is more salient for how we live than the abstraction of clock time: how we decide what to do, how we respond to events around us, how we plan what to do going forward, and more. So, which is “real,” the clock “time” or our lived experience of “time?” While both may be experienced as “real,” only “clock time” dominates our curricular thinking but hides the very real and significant “personal, lived time” which is at play at every moment of our lives. In these senses, conventional “curricular time,” measured in weeks, months, a year and years, misses the real time of “personal experienced, lived time.” When we plan a curriculum in which we spend two weeks on this topic, one week on that topic, have regular “moments” when we assess what has been learned (tests, essays, classroom summation discussions) and envision how the whole of the curriculum fits within a particular larger “time” such as a “school year,” we cannot account for how learning of actual individuals within that dome of clock time are actually living it and learning, each in her/his own way and taking up their lives in specific time lives. The question at the heart of this chapter is: what are the implications of this “personal time” for curriculum? Perhaps most importantly, while this “personal lived time” might be seen to be too idiosyncratic to be of use in curriculum thinking, it will be positioned, through the work of Julia Kristeva, to have powerful sociological/political meaning that is far more than simply some individual’s needs. This “personal lived time” (with its sociological and political dimensions) will be seen, throughout the discussions, to be at significant play at every moment and curricularly more influential and “real” than the clock time of our usual curriculum time. Imagination will come into play as a central figure in re-orienting our relationship to time. And this discussion of time is not merely one specific dimension of curriculum or our lives, but, rather, perhaps the most important dimension of our lives.

Introduction: The Multiplicity of Time

205

In the above writing the word “personal” has been emphasized. Lest the reader think these assertions about time are consonant with the “person-centered” curriculum orientation (discussed in Chapter 5) they are not. The discussion, in this chapter, of becoming a dancer is exemplary of the broadness of thinking about time across all the orientations. My education in dance was highly disciplined and structured and not at all connected to the project-based or Deweyan approaches to curriculum, both expressions of the “person-centered” orientation. Yet the pursuit of a life in dance was clearly a personal fulfillment and my life’s project. While it was not specifically about the social reproduction scheme, I did work to find my place in the world of dance. Lastly, while pursuing such a life has little to do with reconstructing society, dance curriculum, as discussed in Chapter 8, is implicated in how we might change the world through enabling the being of people to find new ways to be. Time is a factor in all the orientations presented in that chapter; there is no specific curriculum orientation signaled by this focus on time which finds life in all these domains yet is servant to none. Additionally, lest the reader think time is made small by the emphasis on the personal, I remind you that throughout this book the personal and the political and the personal and theoretical constantly occupy side-by-side spaces in constant relation to each other. This is especially true in Chapter 4 (“Wild Imagination”) in which the assertion is made that “politics is everywhere at every second, in the seemingly most benign of interactions.” By benign I mean everyday, mundane events. The political inescapably permeates our lives so that the most unobvious events (placing a vacuum cleaner in a desert garden) not intended to be political are filled with political meaning. Similarly, theory and the personal cannot be teased apart. In Chapter 2 (“Mosaical Thinking and Curriculum Theory”), the “personal” is found to be in a significant relationship to theory. From that chapter: [personal] narratives . . . are not merely stories but become expressions of particular theoretical understandings. . . . the dialectic of the theoretical [gives] rise to the understanding of the immediate personal, and the personal [gives] rise to seeking a theoretical understanding around which the story is structured with the story possibilities as theory remaining variable and protean.

This present chapter embodies both these dialectical relationships. The initial discussion of Dwayne Huebner presents time as a transcendent but simultaneously everyday truth. When we massify learners through an application of time as the master of the curriculum (see the opening of the next section), we do away with the personal but, in that sense, do away with the truth about time altogether. Huebner, as will be shown, is working against such massification. When I discuss, in some detail, becoming a dancer, the specific events and experiences of the work toward achieving this desire are redolent with theoretical understandings that become the grounds for thinking about time in relationship to curriculum. When Kristeva is explored, her seemingly abstract concepts are constantly brought to the personal through the invocation of lived experiences of being a woman and, eventually, being a human being. There is no neat division between the personal and the political, between the personal and the theoretical. This chapter, perhaps more than any other, embodies this

206

9 Reimagining Time

dialectical framework constantly informing this book. As with so much else about this book, this understanding emerged through the act of writing and then, only at the end of the whole process. This also epitomizes Doctorow’s (2014) assertion “I write to find out what I am thinking.” This writing is a constantly unfolding journey, a form of currere. With that, let us turn to this exploration of time.

Time in Curriculum Thinking: Dwayne Huebner Time is a central leverage point in curricular thinking and has been since Curriculum Studies’ inception. This leverage point is not explicit but, rather, lies at a deeper underlying structure that informs the thinking. The early curriculum thinkers Bobbitt, Charters, and Snedden limned a movement for making education a more efficient enterprise. They were intrigued by Taylorism, the efficiency movement designed to make better use of time in production and manufacturing processes. They applied Taylorism to education, focusing on how to make the best use of education materials and experiences to get the most learning into learners that would be most socially useful. They proposed block scheduling, platooning of students for better learning and, even an early form of cooperative learning. In this sense they were progressivists as progressivism was an intellectual and political movement focused on making social progress through the application of scientific thinking (as understood then) to improve social processes such as education. Following Bobbitt, Charters, and Snedden, who founded the field now known as Curriculum Studies, Tyler was the next major voice. He too was a progressivist (was the evaluation director for the Eight Year Study) and continued what might be termed “scientism” based on what he had learned in the Eight Year Study. He applied those learnings to curriculum through applying logical thinking for the purpose of making curricular processes rational. In this, Tyler continued a concern with efficiency as did those who followed Tyler’s lead. This interest in time was really an interest against time by focusing on not taking more time than absolutely necessary to create a curriculum and to educate young people. Time was a commodity not to be wasted. Enter Dwayne Huebner who, in 1967, wrote an essay (Hillis & Pinar, 1999) that was, in a sense, a response to the history of curriculum as embodied by such leaders as Bobbitt, Charters, Snedden, and Tyler. He critiqued the Curriculum Studies field as being built upon a false idea: that social science could be used to ground the idea of educational objectives (hard and sure elements) that could be used to design learning which would, also, be hard and sure. Huebner contrasted these hard objects with his insight that education is concerned with the future (perhaps a not particularly revolutionary idea), concerned with “change and continuity, conditioned and unconditioned, necessity and freedom... fixation and creativity”. (p. 135) He positioned his concern as follows: . . . man [sic] can be defined by his temporality. The problems of change and continuity, conditioned and unconditioned, necessity and freedom, or of fixation and creativity are essentially problems of man’s temporality. He [sic] is not a fixed being. His existence is not

Time in Curriculum Thinking: Dwayne Huebner

207

simply given by his being in a given place, but by a present determined by a past and a future, thus offering possibilities for new ways of being. . . . A man’s life cannot be described by what he is or what he does at a given time. (p. 135)

Educational objectives: “what he does at a given time.” Change and continuity (dialectical döppelgangers) blend back and forth into and out of each other. In education there is no still place that can be measured, graded, sorted, and ranked in any way that tells us something about the person beyond that extremely small moment. In very traditional views of curriculum the Latin term educare means “leading out” from a solid knowledge of the past as the basis for the future. We heed our history, our destiny as the basis for all that will happen, thus continuity. David Jardine notes, however, that an equally plausible meaning is looking for a future which is unknown. In this unknown we cannot know with any definiteness what of our past is of value. The past moves into the future and the yet-unknown future influences the past. The ever-moving present is the nodal point for these transitions and intersections. The temporality of education has this twofold character of past and future moving constantly through the ever-changing node of the “present” (for what is the present but a continuously unfolding set of “nows,” therefore always changing?). The kind of rationality that would fix the person as a solid object with known parameters through applying educational objectives misconceives the nature of a human being. (Today’s educational objectives are the scripted pedagogies driven by test scores.) Huebner is not satisfied with this image of temporality as separate entities (past, present, future) in interaction with each other. Temporality, or historicity, is not a characteristic of isolated man, but a characteristic of being-in-the-world. . . . The springs or sources of temporality do not reside in the individual, but in confrontation between the individual and other individuals, other material objects, and other ways of thinking as they are objectified in symbol and operation. (pp. 137–138)

Notice that education occurs in the space between people and between a person and “things” in the world but adds, to that, education as a dialogue between a human being and the “stuff” of her/his world. This “stuff” of education comes into play as a space of symbol sharing (language, mathematics, images, metaphors, political symbols, symbols of social justice, symbols of gender, symbols within and upon symbols) between people. This is redolent of Buber’s emphasis on dialogue. Huebner, however, focuses on the individual and her/his relationship to symbol sharing. For Huebner the question becomes: do we know what we mean by the symbols we share? We must begin to confront the symbol not as a given but as a question posed between us with no obvious answer. As Huebner observes, “man [sic] shapes the world, but the world also shapes man. This is a dialectical process in which cause is effect, and effect is cause. The world calls forth new responses from the individual, who in turn calls forth new responses from the world.” (p. 138) That world is not simply a space filled with “stuff” (educational objectives), but a space occupied by other people. Huebner’s call for responsiveness echoes Buber’s call for dialogue and Buber’s ideas of the I-It and I-Thou basic words structuring our experience (discussed in Chapter 5 “Freedom All Too Human”). Both these basic words have two parts and also share the same part: “I.” The “I,” the person, the ego is never isolated but is always in relationship. In

208

9 Reimagining Time

Huebner’s “being-in-the-world” there is no individual isolated from the world but, always, an individual in the world and, so, not really an individual qua individual. Time is always a matter of relationship to others, rather than an object outside of ourselves. Time does not exist except with others. Thus, time is something shared in the classroom and co-created by the participants, learners, and teachers as they share their symbols and, in dialogic relation, recognize the reality of that relationship as core to existence. Together, in these acts of sharing, they co-create the circumstances for learning, a prime circumstance of which is time. Or, perhaps more accurately, in the ideal classroom, this would be the circumstance. However, in most present-day classrooms, these elements are missing. To be clear, time is not missing. Time is never missing but the qualities of time presented as efficacious by Huebner are missing. The kind of time dominating classrooms is an inexorable march of time in one direction (what, you will see, Julia Kristeva terms cursive time). The slowness of time, the giving over to time to allow learning to unfold in its own time, the acknowledgment of the elasticity of time are non-existent in the ways in which we organize curriculum. Except that all these forms of time (slowness, unevenness of speed, elasticity) are always present, even if they are ignored. It is time to see such forms of time “in action.” So, to my own experiences of learning to dance and teaching dance. I hope you, the reader, will be able to place yourself within these narratives and find analogues to your own life. Where I write “dance,” perhaps you can write your own interest and remember the ways in which time, in all its multiplicity, was in play in your own experience.

Time in a Dancer’s Life: Curriculum Possibilities “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.” Theodore Roosevelt

To say that “nothing... is worth having or... doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty” is to say that nothing worth doing comes easily and if something comes easily it’s probably not worth having or doing. Martha Graham, the great twentieth century choreographer and dance inventor, would have agreed with these sentiments. She, infamously, said that it takes ten years to become a dancer. 10 years of dancing nearly everyday. Ten years of class, of rehearsal, and of concert performances and, then, more class and rehearsal and performance. Ten years in which we were to break down what we knew about our bodies, actually change our bodies in interests of becoming dancers’ bodies and learning how to occupy our bodies in order to live in space, sound, and time and, in all this, rebuilding ourselves as dancers who could “think” in motion. Ten years of total devotion to the art. 10 years. In this time, you must persist, never give up in the face of adversity (injury, rejection, failures of artistry and understanding). Never give up. There are obvious analogues to anything we pursue that requires some complexity of living. We do not just “do” mathematics

Time in a Dancer’s Life: Curriculum Possibilities

209

or entrepreneurial life or writing or, almost any activity we do. We live that activity, immersed in it as a way of looking at every event in our lives, learning ways in which we are not living that particular truth, wrong turns, and unlearning what we thought we knew in order to know in this new way. While my experience of learning and unlearning is steeped in dance, your experience is steeped in whatever has become your lens on the world. Once I discovered dance in my last year of college, I quickly knew that I wanted dance to be my life. Of Martha Graham’s idea of 10 years, I never knew if it were true or not and I didn’t give it much thought, although it lingered on the edges of my consciousness. I was going to dance and become a dancer. Period. That was that. Learning to dance was hard, filled with physical, emotional, psychological, and intellectual stumbling blocks and difficulty as I remade my body and mind. Remake my body and mind in what sense? In the sense of what it takes to truly dance. Dancing isn’t just learning steps and learning to do them well. Dancing is something more fundamental than that. Dancing is paying full and complete attention to your motion. It is as simple as that. If you are, as you read this, paying full attention to your body and its motions as you read, then you could be said to be dancing. Unfortunately, it turns out that this act of complete attention is hugely difficult. It means that at every moment you must be aware of the actions of every molecule of your body. You must be able to intend every part of your body. While there are standard “movement vocabularies” which we associate with “dance,” truly every movement you make within and outside those vocabularies is dance if you are paying full and complete attention to the motion of your body. Yes, you may study the standard vocabularies (“ballet,” “jazz,” “modern” in its various forms, or “hip-hop”), but these are just specific manifestations of this greater truth. Dance is not them. Dance is complete attention to your motion in time and space no matter the motion performed. Nothing more and nothing less. To accomplish these qualities of attention requires you to unlearn much of what you thought you knew about moving. It is a process of constant unlearning and stripping down to the essence of a moment. It is finding how your bodily parts work together to produce a motion. It is finding the origin of your motion deep inside your body so that you are not just moving your legs, torso, arms, feet, head, back, hips, and such. You are moving your whole being and you are occupying your motion in a complete devotion to its temporal and spatial qualities and characteristics. For a dancer, no motion is ever small or insignificant. I recall watching Mikhail Baryshnikov and Natalia Makarova dancing a duet. At one point, down stage, Baryshnikov offered Makarova his hand. Just that, nothing more. He poured his whole being into that hand and all a viewer could see was that hand, that intention, that completeness. Baryshnikov did all kinds of spectacular actions as well in the duet. But it was that one moment that made him into a dancer rather than a performer of spectacular tricks. I recall watching Pearl Lang, a great Martha Graham dancer, performing the role of Clytemnestra in Graham’s full-evening dance of the same name. At one point, while all kinds of events are occurring all over the stage, Lang sat down on the base of a statue. All she did was sit down. But when Lang sat, the audience could see nothing else. All eyes went to her, and she commanded our attention by her complete devotion

210

9 Reimagining Time

to the act of sitting down. It wasn’t spectacular. It wasn’t physically challenging. But it was done with complete devotion to and absorption with that act. These images of dancing show you that the process of dance is about learning to be completely committed to the moment, no matter what the moment is. This devotion is not easy. It is not simple for in its seeming simplicity is everything a dancer will ever do: the command of body, time, space all at once in total coordination and absorption. It is, to reference the epigram, achieved through pain, with effort, and difficulty as you fail again and again and it takes time, a great deal of time. Martha Graham told us it takes ten years to accomplish this state of being (as well as transforming our bodies into vessels of intention that can do physically challenging activity with alacrity and precision). I didn’t know if she was right, and I didn’t care. During those ten years of dancing in NYC and then in Durham NC, I lived the life of constantly dancing, teaching, choreographing, lovingly consumed by dance. And then, sometime during year 10, one morning, while warming up in the Duke University dance studio before classes began, I suddenly felt “whole.” That is how it felt, sudden and whole. I knew my body as a wholeness, and I knew what I wanted at each moment and could produce that desire. If I couldn’t always do what I thought of doing, it was not for want of knowing: only needing to work on the technique of it in a way that was fully artistically vested. I just “knew” without “thinking” outside the motional moment. I thought “in motion” not in words. The motion was “all there.” I had not anticipated this shift. It was just another day in the studio. And then it wasn’t just another day. This is not to say that I was perfect. I also understood that there is no perfection in the usual sense of error-free action. Rather, there is a fulfillment of who I was without misunderstanding: the synonymity of myself and my body in harmony. And not the harmony of smoothness but the harmony of intent and action, no matter the intent. I recount this process (which seems resonant, in part with Buber’s notion of “the release of powers” as a fundamental purpose of education but not sufficient for understanding education) not as praise for myself but as a description of a process that might be necessary for any robust learning. Each of us goes through many missteps and cul-de-sacs on the way to finding our understanding. And the temporal and unlearning/learning processes, these may be true for all learning. If the truism, “time is the great master,” is correct, then, why do we not acknowledge this in our curriculum thinking? I recall, one year while teaching an evening curriculum studies class at ASU, encountering a colleague at the end of our evening classes. It was near the end of the semester. She was muttering to herself as she headed for the elevator. I asked her, “What’s wrong?” “The semester is almost over, and I haven’t gotten them half the material I wanted to get into them. They’re not done.” “Not done? I don’t think my students are ever done. All I can do is make a good beginning. That’s all I can do, begin the journey with them. There is no completion, especially at the end of one semester.” Time is the only true teacher in our work. And yet, we act as if things happen in some calendar way. “Today, you are done.” Another manifestation of time in my dance life comes with the experience of teaching and the need of the teacher to have patience with the learners’ learning. During dance class I could demonstrate, cajole, critique, and suggest something

Time in a Dancer’s Life: Curriculum Possibilities

211

having to do with my students’ dancing and they would struggle with what I was offering. Struggling but not unwilling. They, too, worked assiduously. On occasion we would have, at Duke, a visiting dance company who were doing an evening concert in the main theater. They might, graciously, provide a Master Class for our dance students during the day. I would, also, take the class. Afterward I would, quite frequently, have students share with me something they had taken from the Master Class. They marveled at whatever it was. It was so clear to them. I had been saying/showing the very same idea/movement/way of moving many times over and they had not “heard” me. It took time and a different voice for them to hear and be able to do X better than before. Even if I “repeated” myself with seemingly the same words and gestures, each repetition was not a repetition because each moment is its own moment, its own context. “Over time” the advice, the words, the gestures actually changed and when the student encountered something similar, perhaps put slightly differently and certainly shown differently as the master teacher and I were different dancers in obvious ways, the student was “ready” to receive (or not receive) and report the revelation for which s/he had been striving all this time. Did I get frustrated at this? Hadn’t I told them this over and over and they couldn’t hear and now they could? Yes, I had. But I wasn’t frustrated. This was just the way it was. Learning took time. Learning took experimentation with what we were doing, working through their body/mind, failing, noticing, trying another way, trying again, failing, and starting the process all over again. One day, with all that work inside them, they hear a different voice, not my voice, stating the self-same things I had been sharing. And they heard. Not that it is merely a matter of waiting with no effort. It is a matter of assiduous work/play for the work/play dialectic is profoundly “true”. Work must be playful as in playing around with elements until something happens. Play must be pursued in a dedicated manner, never frivolous, always serious, but always play. No, not merely waiting. This is the truth of learning: it takes time, it has no calendar, it is the person who lives inside the material until one day it comes together in an organized way that makes sense. What were, previously, disconnected elements with no coherence, now cohere into a pattern they can understand and deploy in the interest of further, in this case, dance. What is true for dance is true for any learning. And, as noted in Chapter 3 (“Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom”), that learning over time relies on unlearning. They are dialectical partners: you cannot have one without the other. So, too, with teaching curriculum studies. Understand that your learners may not understand what you are doing, that it will take years before it begins to cohere. The understanding may come when, in some particular circumstance, what you taught returns to the learner within that circumstance and, suddenly, what it is you taught makes sense, answers a question posed by the circumstance. It feels like a revelation but, in fact, it was just a matter of time until the teaching and life coincided. I have always asked my students to be patient with me and with themselves. They won’t understand at first and not for a while. It will take living their own practice. None of this can come as a surprise. Who among us is not aware that our students will not get it, that we, ourselves, did not “get it” at first and for a long time? Nevertheless, we rarely, if ever, talk about time in Curriculum Studies and when we

212

9 Reimagining Time

do it is likely in pedestrian terms of “I don’t have enough time to get my students where I want them to be.” As if it is up to you to “get them” anyplace or “put knowledge into them.” As if you have the power to control the outcome. Time will not permit such hubris. It never does. The rhythm of learning and unlearning is time and experience melded with encounters with possibilities that, at first, are not available in a meaningful way. Some people never unlearn themselves. Unlearning oneself requires a desire to unlearn oneself, to confront who one is and what one wants going forward. How we move “forward” is not a quick or linear experience. It is as much recursive as it is anything. One keeps revisiting what one thought one knew, only to come to understand that one didn’t know at all, that what one thought one knew wasn’t known but was a “new” version of old knowing that was holding the person in place. It was an old road disguised as something new and had to be discarded if one was to “progress.” But “progress,” itself, is not knowable since the way forward is never straightforward. The old adage “two steps forward, one step back” fits here. But the “one step back” is not a loss but a realization that one of those steps was a false step. Knowing this step to be false is a kind of knowing and, therefore, of value. Most importantly, there is the process of gestation. Sometimes one comes to know by doing nothing. Or doing something that has nothing to do with what one is “doing.” Getting away from yourself who is pushing too hard in a direction without understanding the direction in which one is pushing. Sometimes, leaving it alone, allowing it to grow on its own without conscious activity is a form of “action” (by taking, seemingly, no action except one is always taking action). This, clearly, has meaning for curriculum thinking. So far I have been writing about time as duration: how long it takes to do something. Time isn’t about some specific, measurable condition (despite Graham’s almost aphoristic 10 years). Time is duration that is elastic, sometimes moving along speedily, sometimes seeming to move haltingly, if at all. My career-long project of answering David Purpel’s question (“A Personal Project Gives Rise to Theory: A Journey Through Time” section of this chapter) about the place of dance in curriculum if it could not address dire situations of the world is a species of time moving haltingly, if at all. But time does move and change and, with it, the qualitative experience changes, even if a person is unable to sense the change. Time is not just duration. Time is what Henri Bergson (Guerlac, 2017) termed heterogeneous. Bergson noted that our “static conception of time... turn[s] ‘time into a clockface/circle with specific distances between markings’,” with each “moment” identical to all other “moments” as far as the clock is concerned (homogeneity of time) (Guerlac, p. 2). Heterogeneous time is the span of time that has various periods of different durations which are qualitatively different from each other. The experience we have of not knowing seems endless. Then we have a moment of knowing that is instantaneous, perhaps a series of knowings that flow rapidly, and time is now moving quickly. This lived experience of time involves not knowing how long the present period will last and when it will end. We simply endure the time event and then endure a different time event. This can be seen in the “stories” of learning above. One can be grinding away at learning with no apparent progress in knowing when,

Time in a Dancer’s Life: Curriculum Possibilities

213

one day, one suddenly knows something in a way one didn’t before. Now, time speeds up. There may be some rapid accruals of knowing. They will feel rapid. It is this feeling that actually constitutes time. That is Bergson’s point and mine. There is, of course, no guarantee about the outcome. A person might never “become a dancer.” A person might never gain the insight claimed during the master class. Or, it might be said, a person will, eventually “become a dancer” only the 10 years is but a guess. The real demand is to endure, to persist until a person has achieved what is desired. Time is not a thing (a minute) or an assemblage of things (day). Time, according to Bergson (Guerlac, 2017) is “force” (p. 7). Force means energy: sluggish energy, electric, exciting energy, powerful energy, weak energylessness. In the energies of learning over time, we may experience time in all these ways. They become part of what we know and how we experience what we know. They are all necessary forces of time. One cannot live constantly on the “high” of discovery. Sometimes, it is just slogging, hard work with little reward. Until the day of knowing occurs. All the moments before, all the various durational experiences are necessary to this moment of breakthrough. It is this vision of time as duration and force which we might consider in our curricular thinking.

The Elasticity of Time Not only is time variable and heterogeneous. So, too, are people’s experience of time. The experience of time has nothing to do with the measurement of time into minutes, hours, days, weekdays/weekend days, months, and years. The feeling of time is also part of time. 4 in the afternoon and 4 in the morning have the same number and the name number of minutes and hours separating them. But the experience of these two times (asleep for one of these clock moments or the other depending on what shift one has for work, as examples) changes the “meaning” of the number. Then there is musical time, built on some metronomic regularity that is adhered to or not adhered to, but underlying music we recognize the meetings and departures from regular, rhythmic time. In musical time there is legato and staccato, there is allegro and andante and lento. These are not measurements since there is no absolute precision as to how they are played or experienced. The “feel” of the lento between two musicians is like occupying two worlds. Which is the point: the two musicians bring the force of their playing in different ways to the music which, on the music sheet, is inert until brought into the world through the force of the musicians’ actions. So, too, outside of music, there is the lived experience of time. This produces a very different set of relationships to time, not having to do with regularity. There are people who we experience as living at high speed. There are people whose pace is the very opposite and these people can be experienced by the high-speed people as frustrating. (Let’s go! We’re going to be late!) Each “type” experiences the passage of time quite differently. Related to this is the experience of fast time and slow time within an individual’s experiences. In fast time, I am working on some writing that, suddenly, absorbs me in what is unfolding in my understanding. Time seems to

214

9 Reimagining Time

disappear. I look at my watch and it’s 7:30. The next time I look at my watch and it’s 11 pm. Where did the time go? I ask myself. The clock time tells me 3½ hours. The bodily time tells me something much smaller. Then there is slow time. I have an appointment at 1 pm. A friend is driving me. It takes 25 min to get to the appointment. He is to pick me up at 12:30. I begin to expect him for 12:30 at 12:15. I’m anxious about the meeting. Every minute feels very, very slow. I look at my watch and it’s 12:20. I look at my watch 10 min later and it’s 12:25. He, it turns out, is 10 min late. That 10 min feels like an eternity. He will get me there on time by speeding up a little but the whole trip now feels endless. Time has literally massively slowed down and sped up as the trip is simultaneously excruciatingly slow (we’ll never get there) but the meeting is more rapidly meeting me than the speed of time will allow for me to arrive. I’m sure I will be late. I, eventually, do arrive “on time.” Time collapses back into a regularity that allows it to recede into the background of my consciousness. It regains its “regularity” and its invisibility. The same clock time pertains to all these senses of time, but the experience of time literally shifts. There is also the time of repetition where a person goes over and over the same event in her/his mind, replays the event that has happened or projects a future and practices an image of that future over and over (for instance, rehearsing a lecture). Take the experience of mourning a loved one. One may live over and over the moment of death of the loved one. And, one may, repeatedly, remember episodes in one’s life with the loved one. In all of this time may become oppressive and, in that oppression, tension builds with the possibility of an emotional explosion. This time feels exceedingly uncomfortable. In fact, of course, the rituals of mourning function to allow such tension and discomfort to be lived through in a sanctioned structure in which everyone in the culture recognizes and honors the process of grief. But certainly, someone is “given time” to grieve. Elasticity of time is real. If so, why not make it a systematic character of the curriculum? Why not acknowledge the temporality of our human lives? That is what education is for. Meet ourselves. Over and over again. Too much of the time, we don’t meet ourselves in education. In fact, too much of the time, we avoid any kind of self at all. We pretend to be something (the good student, the trouble student, the bored student, the disdainful student, the enthusiastic student). But who are we? Really? Bergson wrote that “’the continuous progress of the past... gnaws into the future... and... swells as it advances.’” (Muldoon, 1991). This physical image of time (continuous gnawing and swelling) is an apt description of the experiences I describe in becoming a dancer and teaching others to become dancers. What might this have to do with curriculum? Not all learning flows at the same speed. There are times when learning is boring and time crawls. There are times when the project in question is exciting and work sessions feel so fulfilling that you can’t believe the time has passed. We do not, in our regular curricular thinking account for or allow boredom. We take it as a sign of failure. But boredom is part of life, perhaps even a marker of information gained in no other way. We don’t allow that different cultures have different views of time. Macdonald (1995) writes of the anthropologist Edward T. Hall’s 10 characteristics of any culture, one of which has to do with how cultures live time. If we make time in schools and in the classroom

The Elasticity of Time

215

comport, unknowingly, to a particular culture’s view and experience of time, then those whose culture differs on time will experience the curriculum as hostile and inaccessible. It is not that such learners are incapable of learning, only that within the offered time constraints they are made to struggle and, often, fail. They might have learned perfectly well were their time constraints the governing structure of the curriculum. Time is typically ignored in the curriculum except for considering how much “content” you can fit into how much “time.” But, given all the above, time, in all its manifestations of variability and elasticity, both personal and cultural, is core to the curriculum. If the education process were a patient process, accepting and using time wisely, what might be accomplished? Even think of education as a pause in the ongoing time of typical learning, in which one is asked to take the time to think again, to be confused again, to let go of surety in interest of what is not known or experienced yet. That is the notion of unlearning that permeates this book. To stop time within the confines of the education moment, to confront the confusion (which might be tinged with sorrow or frustration) is to afford the opportunity to look back, to rest, to allow what has been to roil within your body, to confront the aporia of your understanding. It is to confuse in order to think again, to confront in order to wonder. If time is experienced time, it is also cultural time: the time we learn to live through to participate in our society. Julia Kristeva helps us understand the play of time as cultural time in our Western world. What follows is an excursion away from education but will have implications for what we do and do not do in education.

Monumental and Cursive Time Julia Kristeva’s essay “Women’s Time” (1986) explores the idea and experience of time from within a socio-philosophical cultural analysis of Western life. She examines time from a gendered perspective. While this essay is not directed at education, it is possible to extrapolate her discussion in education terms. As already discussed, time as presently lived in schools is but one kind of time (still Bobbitt’s, Charters’, Snedden’s and Tyler’s time): a linear, leaving-error-behind form of time, measured in clock terms. Kristeva names this form of time “cursive time” from Nietzsche. Cursive time likens time to words unspooling on a page, one after the other, inexorably moving the reader “forward” through the text. Nietzsche associates cursive time with the time of history: history, as conventionally practiced, taught, and conventionally theorized, unfolds in one continuous line in one direction (even if that line is highly complex, it still unfolds only forward). “Cursive time” is also the time of progress: as history unfolds it is always in a positive, better world direction. “Cursive time” is triumphalist in character: at the end of time the great triumph of power leaves weaker times of history in the dust and forgotten. “Cursive time” dominates our Western view of time. We are meant to make our world a better and better world, leaving the mistakes of the past behind. In parallel fashion, in most education we teach for better and better knowledge, leaving error behind, believing

216

9 Reimagining Time

we know what constitutes “better knowledge.” Education time is treated as unfolding in an inexorably forward direction. On the other side is “monumental time.” Monumental time is time which “englobes... supra-national, socio-cultural ensembles within even larger entities” (p. 189). That is, monumental time places, in one space, ensembles of meaning that intersect each other at a single moment or an extended moment that is yet singular. Englobing or enclosing a mass of multiple entities leaves no entity supreme over the other entities and does not move forward (or backward) in a linear progression. There is no directionality in englobement. It is simply a process of dwelling within the stillness of an intersection point of multiple entities laced together in a complex skein. This englobed mass makes cursive time stop its forward movement and, simply, “be.” Kristeva describes women’s time as “female subjectivity” (both a political term and a form of consciousness achieved through both cultural and biological experiences) which “provide[s] a specific measure that essentially retains repetition and eternity from multiple modalities of time known through the history of civilizations.” (p. 191) This kind of time (repetition and eternity) is found in the “cycles, gestation, the eternal recurrence of a biological rhythm which conforms to that of nature and imposes a temporality... whose regularity and unison with what is experienced as extrasubjective time, cosmic time, vertiginous visions and unnameable jouissance.” (p. 191) This is the time of menses, of pregnancy, “extrasubjective time” and “unnameable jouissance.” It is not a time of rationality, of intellectual progress. It is time that grounds knowing in the state of repetition and waiting. When, in education, are we willing to wait and when, in education, is repetition seen as a positive modality of learning or being? Such time presents the “massive presence of a monumental temporality, without cleavage or escape, which has little to do with linear time (which passes) which the word temporality hardly fits: All-encompassing and infinite like imaginary space...” Such time flies in the face of cursive time. Notice that such time is the time of infinity “like imaginary space.” Present education practice is wedded to learning in small amounts and proven so through small amounts (tests) with no interest in these broad swaths of waiting time. This brings to mind the value of waiting as a form of englobement and the waiting of gestation. There is the value of taking your time within the immediacy of a project. My dance mentor, Phyllis Lamhut, taught the importance of waiting in the actual act of making dance. One day, in our “theory” class (a class in which ideas were offered which we were to turn into improvised dances that would be coherent works of art), we were working in groups of about 5, one group at a time. We would get into the dance space with the offered idea and then create, on the spot, a dance. One day, when my group gathered to begin our work, we stood, moved to the center of the space, and began. Lamhut immediately stopped us. “No, don’t just begin. First, stand in a circle, feel each other, be aware of the presence of each other, wait for someone to make an offer to the group and take up that offer and proceed. In this way, this will be a group dance of 5 people bound together through working with the idea. It will truly be a group dance rather than 5 soloists dancing at the same time.” This was such a revelation and has carried over to the encountering of scholarly work. So often, as one of my graduate students put it when trying to read through Bourdieu

Monumental and Cursive Time

217

and Bakhtin, we read for content (we begin right away), as speedily as possible. These two scholars required a different kind of reading, a reading of what he termed “study.” He meant by this that we now read for understanding and living through the meanings of the text; we study the text which takes time and patience, we begin by waiting for the text to come to us, to take a breath before beginning in order to enter into the atmosphere of the text and join it on its terms. It is that “stand in a circle, feel each other, wait for an offer and then begin.” Now, rather than an author and her/his readers there is, for each of us, an author/reader entered upon the same project ensconced within a form of taking your time, which is another form of time we little credit in our curriculum thinking. Returning to Kristeva, focus upon the time of infinity “like imaginary space.” When entering an imaginative state, one can experience “vertiginous visions and unnameable jouissance.” In fact, the experience of coming upon a new understanding through an act of imagination is fully bodily and known as being of value by the bodily rush one feels. And, as described, above, in the learning to dance, it is constant repetition and experimentation during the encounter with what you are repeating that becomes the ground for exploring more deeply the simplest elements of your body and motion (your mind and its ideas as well, in intellectual work). In parallel fashion, it is the bringing of new life into the world through an act of waiting (as in Lamhut’s “waiting to begin” as the ground for being present to something beyond yourself only found through withholding your individualist cultural instinct) and experiencing growth (gestation) over which one has no control. So, with imagination, you cannot force it to “be” but only patiently place yourself in a state of attention. For learning, for imagination, for giving birth, this is the eternal rhythm and repetition that brings life and imagination forth. In contrast, if linear or cursive time has its inexorable determinants of symbols that are moved through “history” to make sense of time, monumental, gestational time is not a making sense process but a being and a patience project. To repeat, monumental time is stillness and knowing, not projection and movement. Contemporary education rejects imagination and rejects the body and all its messiness, fixated as it is on the mind. It is not surprising, then, that the female experience of body, of gestation, of menses, and all the larger images which Kristeva provides, finds no place in education. If that is the case, it is not merely women’s time which is absented from education. It is women themselves. If their experiences are not permitted in the classroom, in the curriculum, then women and girls begin in a deficit with central experiences to their lives ruled out of bounds from the classroom and from the curriculum. In all the ways described above, subsumed under the sign “monumental time,” “women’s time” is written out of the story. Kristeva’s is not only a rhetorical argument. She sites her argument from within her analysis of language. Language is the center of culture and, therefore, has meaning for time. Recall, the term “cursive” references the structure of language. For Kristeva, since language and culture are intimately linked, language also references what Kristeva terms “the symbolic order.” As language is cursively ordered, organized, and experienced, so our experiences in the world are organized cursively. Kristeva terms the experience of learning a language as being inserted into the world as the Symbolic

218

9 Reimagining Time

Order. This is not merely a technical description. Kristeva asserts that the Symbolic Order is “the law of the Father.” Why “the law of the Father?” As cursive time is masculine time (ruling out women’s time) and, therefore, patriarchal, so language, upon which it depends, is patriarchal. As we are forced to learn language, no matter our gender or sexuality, we are inserted into the patriarchal order (or, perhaps, the patriarchal order is inserted into us). This domination of language sidelines, at best, other ways of being in the world, such as in monumental time and imagination. This insertion into the symbolic order brings about a dire consequence. Kristeva writes that “linear time is that of language considered as the enunciation of sentences (noun + verb; topic-comment; beginning-end)... this time rests on its own stumbling block... death.” (p. 192) Howso death? Every sentence when it ends, that sentence dies. Perhaps it arcs through the space between sentences, but there is still an empty space through which it arcs. There is still death at the end of each sentence or utterance. If each sentence is life, its ending is death. This tension within the sociopsychical culture between death and life becomes a structural attribute of language. Language brings the world to us through a separation from a presumed state of nature, of pleasure fused with nature so that the introduction of an articulated network of differences, which refers to objects henceforth and only in this way separation . . . is therefore the common destiny of the two sexes, men and women. (p. 198)

Language is “an articulated network of differences” in which we understand words by the words they are not that might be connected to them through either similar meaning or sound. If language is, then, attached to nature, language holds nature away from us by inserting it into the network of differences (language) such that we do not know nature in its “pleasure.” Nature becomes “objects” that can be manipulated by manipulating words. To accomplish this, language functions negatively by showing us what something is not (not this word or this sound). Language breaks up the material reality around us into these pieces designated by words. In contrast, nature is a wholeness whose “parts” are so interwoven that you cannot understand any “part” without understanding its connections across the web of other “parts” until nature is a wholeness known by its interleavedness. Nature cannot be experienced or understood through a process of differences. Gestation is part of nature, not part of language. In short, nature is a wholeness that cannot be experienced or understood through differences. But, for women, when gestation functions as a label, a word rather than an experience, it functions to separate woman from the male world. In some cultures, women are put away to await the child, literally put out of sight while she “waited her time.” Why is this? The image of a pregnant woman reminds us that pregnancy began in sexual passion, in, perhaps, jouissance. It began in that no-time of intimacy. A cursive culture refuses to admit to this time which must be controlled and put out of sight. What are some consequences of this insertion into the symbolic order and separation from nature? Kristeva writes that to achieve preeminence, language must “emphasize... [a] privation of fulfillment and totality,” must “[exclude]... a pleasing, natural and sound state” (p. 198). Think of the ordinary curriculum. It is rarely, if ever,

Monumental and Cursive Time

219

about the telling of a big story in the world, about overarching ideas that englobe understanding. It is, usually, about the minutiae of small problems and pieces of knowledge that add up to nothing. It is not fulfilling as an experience. It is not “pleasing” and “natural.” It connects to nothing outside itself. These privations and exclusions, however, are “indispensable to the advent of the symbolic.” (p. 198) What does this mean for education and in what ways does it truncate the monumental? Education is typically associated with developing the ability to manipulate the symbolic in many ways (through numbers, through language as explanation, through emphasizing the correct answer to questions isolated from the real world). In short, this means an immersion in abstraction as in knowledge abstracted from the material world and transformed into symbols that can be manipulated at the cost of connection with the immediate, physical world around us. I recall visiting a middle school classroom in which, at that moment, the students were working with Fibonacci numbers in the form of an abstract pine tree shape on their work sheets. Right outside their window was a real pine tree with pine cones. Neither the students nor the teacher made the connection with nature and, yet there was the lived reality of these numbers immediately present. This seems a concrete image of the divide, in the curriculum between the “pleasing, natural” and “symbol.” This example speaks to the ways in which, while the symbolic is certainly an achievement, we must recognize what is sacrificed in this achievement, what is lost, what is made invisible and marginalized: the body, imagination, connection. Thus, the symbolic order is to be both valued for what it provides and bemoaned for what it ignores and destroys. If all this loss is the case for women, “What can be our [women’s] place in the symbolic contract?” (p. 199) If women wish to no longer be excluded or no longer content with the function which has always been demanded of us (to maintain, arrange and perpetuate this socio-symbolic contract as mothers, wives, nurses, doctors, teachers . . .), how can we reveal our place, first as it is bequeathed to us by tradition, and then as we want to transform it? (p. 199)

Women have been left out of the socio-symbolic contract, of language as the fundamental social bond. They find no affect there, no more than they find the fluid and infinitesimal significations of their relationships with the nature of their own bodies, that of the child, another woman or a man. (p. 199)

To be clear here, women succeed in the education system as presently constituted. This is more and more the case. But this success is won at a great cost as to what is left out, not just to women but to all of us. For nature is all our inheritances and the location of unending possibility. But it is women upon whom Kristeva is focused. As it turns out, Kristeva is not actually only focused on women. In the midst of the essay, she suddenly makes a shift, bringing men back into the picture. She states that separation is the “common destiny of the two sexes, men and women.” (p. 198) This suggests that what the woman undergoes physically in gestation and subsequent separation at birth, both sexes undergo in the insertion into the symbolic order of difference and separation (language). Men and women suffer the same kind of loss. This will be significant for, were it not so, men would not be able to take advantage

220

9 Reimagining Time

of a different kind of education time, the educational time of gestation, and inner growth left alone and uncontrolled by rationality. This is not the case, as will be shown. Kristeva’s way forward is surprising. She tells us that we may strike an attitude which interrupts the “very dichotomy man/woman as an opposition between two rival entities... understood as belonging to metaphysics [emphasis added]” (p. 209). The difference between women and men is metaphysical, not physical. Perhaps there is a way for men/the male to be connected to something gestational, fluid, bodily. Kristeva wants to be clear that she is “not simply suggesting a very hypothetical bisexuality which, if it existed, would only, in fact, be the aspiration towards the totality of one of the sexes and thus an effacing of difference.” (p. 209) That is, this hypothetical bisexuality would actually allow one of the sexes to take over and totalize the scene in its interests while appearing to be decamping from the war zone. Instead, Kristeva writes, she is looking to “the demassification of the problematic of difference, which would imply, in a first phase, an apparent de-dramatization of the ‘fight to the death’ between rival groups and thus between the sexes. (p. 209) That is, women and men are not doomed to occupy radically opposite sides of the divide. She offers this insight about a metaphysical difference: it is not a matter of some reconciliation [but, rather, to see] that the struggle, the implacable difference, the violence be conceived in the very place where it operates with the maximum intransigence, in other words, in personal and sexual identity itself, so as to make it disintegrate its very nucleus. (p. 209)

That is, this struggle can eventuate in an actual dissolving of historically constructed differences between men and women (such as men are capable of intellectual work and women’s minds would be overheated by such work, placing them in psychological jeopardy). George Lakoff (1990), in Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, helps us understand this in his analysis of language. He argued that we use language to set up “ideal types” that do not exist in reality. For instance, the word “mother” supposedly means “biological mother” so that only a woman who has borne children is a mother. But we know that people who have been raised by women other than their biological mothers, see those women as entirely their mothers. Then there are the women of the neighborhood who are always looking out for the welfare of all the children in the neighborhood. They, too, are seen as “mother.” Lakoff goes further than this. He stipulates that there is the “ideal type” (mother) and there are these other possibilities that are spread around that ideal type, closer or further from its center, but they are all mothers. What can be said of mothers can be said of the gender “ideal types” of female and male, feminine and masculine. There are many “types” of women and many “types” of men. There is no one who is the complete fulfillment of the ideal type. So, no one is actually male or female, masculine or feminine. We are closer or further from the cultural ideal type but each of us hovers in the vicinity of one of those types. Even that may be too strong, for there are characteristics of some men which are labeled “feminine” and characteristics of some women who are labeled “masculine.” There is the transgender community and the queer community in which we see,

Monumental and Cursive Time

221

again, the wide diversity of ways of being masculine and feminine. The monolithic application of the “ideal type” truncates our possibilities. The struggle, in Kristeva’s terms, is to dissolve historically constructed differences. Kristeva’s suggestions will, potentially, threaten both “personal equilibrium” and “social equilibrium.” That is, men and women will be thrown off kilter and the society will suddenly find itself without a firm foundation but will be, rather the tension between the cursive and the monumental. The only way to move away from this imprisoning dichotomy is to destabilize the equilibrium which is more like a détente in a seemingly ongoing war. We must become free from the constitution and functioning of [the symbolic] contract, starting less from the knowledge accumulated about it (anthropology, psychoanalysis, linguistics) than from the very personal affect experienced when facing it as subject and as a woman. . .. break the code, . . . shatter language . . . find a specific discourse closer to the body and emotions, to the unnameable repressed by the social contract. (p. 199)

We must understand that “the main concern has become the socio-symbolic contract as a sacrificial contract” (p. 199). That is, this sacrificial contract has meant a sacrifice of all that has been described: nature, body, pleasure in the form of jouissance. Both women and men have had to sacrifice these states to be “let in” to the halls of power, dominated by cursive time and all its implications. We will accomplish our interrogation of this sacrifice through the personal affect we all have experienced. Thus the return of the personal into theory. Kristeva offers yet greater specificity as to what will accomplish this. She turns to aesthetic practices as a turn to demystifying particular social practices and raising questions of morality. ’[A]esthetic practices’ [can] not only . . . counter-balance the storage and uniformity of information by present-day mass media, data-bank systems and, in particular, modern communications technology, but also [can] demystify the identity of the symbolic bond . . . the community of language as a universal and unifying tool . . . which totalizes and equalizes. (p. 210) . . . what I have called ‘aesthetic practices’ are undoubtedly nothing other than the modern reply to the eternal question of morality. . .. [T]his is how we might understand an ethics . . . sacrificial, reserv[ing] part of the burden for each of its adherents, therefore declar[ing] them guilty while immediately affording them the possibility for jouissance, for various productions, for a life made up of both challenges and differences. (p. 211)

Kristeva moves toward the central play of time, destabilizing and retrieving something vital to us, in educational experience, in our consciousness as a complex amalgam of the cultural, social, political and embodiment, and in life more generally. We can, through aesthetic practices (which are always grounded in a patience with materials and a gestative practice), come to understand that art is accomplished not in a direct line from conception to inception but rather in the patience of inner gestation and allowing there to be a dialogue between artist and art. The artist is present to the art and the art to the artist, almost as if the art is animate. What is the case for art is also, I assert, the case for education. All that has been described in this chapter can contribute to a multi-faceted image of what is possibly curricular.

222

9 Reimagining Time

All of this takes time (said unironically). As noted in the opening, art and learning to make art are not a matter of learning techniques and directly applying them. Art and learning to make art involve cultivating forms of seeing and being. Art and learning to make art involve cultivating disciplined presence that is, nonetheless, a being present that is not about moving forward to an end but about discovering the end and the middle through the act of the making. This, too, takes time. We can retrieve aesthetics and art from its home in the hidden attic of our minds to which it has been banished for its connection to femininity and all that encompasses the female gender. We can begin to reappropriate it as a valid state of our common humanness. But, of course, all I have described is lost in the present cursive, linear, bureaucratic, hurried world of efficiency and truncation, a world which has been ours since the inception of Curriculum Studies. These organizing notions (repetition, gestation, eternity, and stillness) are not only cultural (the symbolic order) organizing notions of curricular time. They are also natural. Kristeva’s exploration of menstruation and gestation is not culturally grounded. That is, while understanding that different cultures may take different stances toward these events, there is something that also crosses cultural boundaries that is not about culture but about biology. In this postmodern age we wish to believe that biology is but a mere banal ground, that all the play of interest is in culture and human sociation. This is wrong and non-dialectical in character: we are both biological and cultural and in ignoring one or the other of this dialectic we only tell a truncated story. If this exploration of time is to have educational salience, then the story offered must be fuller. It has already been noted that education, as presently practiced, is a practice of cursive time, pushing “forward” to more and more accrual of knowledge and/or skills. This is quintessential cursive time. Women’s bodily experience and the counter wisdom that accrues from such knowledge arising from a different bodily space is at odds with this temporal organization of education. The dancer’s life also is a life at odds with the cursive. Learning and study are at odds with this temporal organization of education. The idea that one might need the cycles of repetition and that there would be gestation period with its organic changes is not part of education thinking. Ironically, there is repetition in education but that is criticized as “roteness” of repeatedly drilling students in the “basics” and is only visited upon those who can’t move on. There is the act of “retention” or holding someone back to repeat a grade due to “lack of progress.” This “retention” is a shameful act that is not about revisiting knowledge for greater depth. It is punishment for failure to thrive, a failure to move forward linearly through the curriculum. This conclusion outlines some of the problems we face in education. In the end women’s knowledge is excluded from the curriculum, meaning, in a sense, women (and girls) are excluded from the curriculum. And men, too, are excluded if they do not fit the ideal type of masculinity. Both masculinity and femininity are a sliding scale. Not all women are alike. Not all men are alike. But our curricular thinking is virulently masculinist in the narrow senses discussed above. This leaves little room for real people.

A Personal Project Gives Rise to Theory: A Journey Through Time

223

A Personal Project Gives Rise to Theory: A Journey Through Time At the beginning of this chapter, I wrote: “the personal and the “abstract” or “theoretical” cannot be teased apart without damaging both. The personal is always grounded in the theoretical but the theoretical that cannot be experienced as lived experience is of little meaning or value.” Now, at the end of this chapter, I return to my “reasons” for doing this work that may concretize the “theory” of Kristeva. I find, in my own processes, images of what Kristeva may mean by gestation and repetition and what Martha Graham may mean by 10 years of diligence. As I wrote in my first book on aesthetics and curriculum (BlumenfeldJones, 2012), I had spent my youth (high school and college) quite dedicated to political things as well as a focus on what I thought was my future: a poet teaching in a university. Here, art and politics were kept apart from each other, but both were equally “lived.” But then, in my junior year of college I discovered dance. This changed the course of my life. Rather than go to graduate school, as all had expected (including myself), I chose to go to NYC to pursue a life in dance. I told my wife of the time and my family, that this was a temporary experiment, that I would stop it the moment it didn’t seem to be working out. But I knew the truth: nothing could stop me, nothing would stop me, there could be no “not working out.” In that decision and moment, I left my political self entirely behind. I didn’t begin to rediscover that self until I was living in Durham, NC, teaching at Duke and certain political events unfolded in North Carolina that would draw my attention back to politics. And I didn’t fully rediscover that political self until the first year of my doctoral program at UNC-Greensboro. As I wrote in that first book: David Purpel, then chair of the department, asked to meet with me, in his capacity as chair even though I wasn’t going to be his mentee. I, of course, agreed to meet with him. At that meeting the re-awakening began in earnest. David said to me: Donald, I have a question for you I would like you to answer at the end of your time here. This is it: given the terrible state of the world, the huge number of people living in poverty, the ever-increasing degradation of the environment, the ever-present possibility of nuclear holocaust, don’t you feel just a little foolish prancing around in a room in front of a mirror with very little clothing on? At the end of your time here I want to you tell me how dance can address this situation because if it’s not part of the solution then it is part of the problem. You know I always wanted to learn to play the clarinet but there just wasn’t time. I was stunned. David, as prophets of old did (and surely David in his life was a prophet in that old tradition of calling us to ourselves), awoke what had been dormant but slightly stirring. That year he sent me to the Bergamo Conference (another important moment in my life) and I came back with the statement that I loved this conference, but the political side of curriculum studies seemed absent (by this time the political left had stopped attending the conference and I conflated that sect with the only kind of politics there was, in my old vision inherited from my parents). The move was more or less complete. David wanted me to bring them together again, not because he knew my personal history but because, I’m guessing, for him the arts were a confusion. How could anyone pursue them

224

9 Reimagining Time

when the world was in such a terrible state? They were frivolous. We were all Neros while Rome burned. And, so, he threw this challenge to me. (Blumenfeld-Jones, 2012, pp. 11–12)

I spent the next more than 20 years attempting to answer his question, to reconcile art and politics in a way that wasn’t making art merely a servant to activate people to political life. In what ensued, the elasticity of time played a major role and now I know to say that Kristeva’s description of the monumental as gestation, repetition, and eternity could be used to understand the process of my practice. As just noted, I took David’s challenge seriously but had no idea how to address it. In my first seven years at Arizona State University, my only task was to achieve tenure and pursuing this project, I was let know, would not be acceptable. Taking care of my future and my family were my first and only concerns. Yes, I pursued projects that made sense to me and in their own way were necessary to my growth. It was as if there were wrong lovers for a while from which I learned about myself but weren’t my true passion. That true passion was dance above all, and art/Curriculum Studies intersection as a location for that love of dance. While I wanted to be more than “just a dancer” to the field I also wouldn’t let go of what, for me, was the definition of who I was. Could I join the two? I couldn’t pursue this passion until I had tenure and could do what I felt was right. So, once earning tenure, I began to more seriously pursue an answer. With Sue Stinson’s help I returned to my dance love but with a new project, the original challenge presented by David. I threw myself, full force, into aesthetics and education, especially in the domain of ABER. I began to think about and read of imagination and its play in thinking and learning. I couldn’t see any satisfying place for the arts in political life as I rejected the idea of the arts as a message board for proper political positions. I saw art as its own form of inquiry, on the same level as sociology, history, anthropology, psychology, and any other “social” sciences. Except it wasn’t science (Snow, 1993). None of this actually addressed David’s challenge which remained a fallow field, hovering in my background mind but never really addressed. I was waiting. I was ruminating. As I have just noted, in the meantime I pursued a vision of the arts through work in ABER. But, still, this brought me no closer to addressing David’s challenge. It was a false direction. Early on David and Sue Stinson had introduced me to James Macdonald’s work. Macdonald’s core insight into education always remained with me as a kind of north star for my inquiries: “There are only two questions worth asking in education “What is the meaning of human existence?” And “How shall we live together?” Not only are they the only two questions worth asking but they are answered every day in our actions in our educational settings.

I took Macdonald’s second question to be a question of ethics and the closest I would or could come to addressing David’s political question. This led me to an exploration of ethics theory, but, again, ethics failed me: it was purely mind. Another false avenue. I was stuck. Until I found Mark Johnson’s book, The Moral Imagination, which posited the place of imagination in moral thinking and recommended looking to the arts as a location for developing such an imagination. Johnson’s work offered a more serious understanding of the play of aesthetics in ethics, thus, perhaps in

A Personal Project Gives Rise to Theory: A Journey Through Time

225

politics. But Johnson did not understand the process of the artist and his work, for me, remained sterile because of that lack. It was an intellectual rendering, not an experiential story to which I could relate. Another false direction? I didn’t think it was, but I didn’t know where to go beyond it. I eventually found Emmanuel Levinas. I had known of him years before but hadn’t paid much attention and found him impossible to read. I needed time and I didn’t have time: too consumed with turning out work, with trying to advance my career. No way to be a scholar but there it is. But, on one sabbatical I made it my mission to read Totality and Infinity: An Essay in Exteriority and understand it. This book became a turning point for my thinking, moving away from an intellectual view of ethics and forwarding Macdonald’s assertion question: “How shall we live together?” Here was a vision based on an intimate relationship between two people, not based on rules but on recognizing the Other as separate from me in a way that called to me to care for the Other. This immediacy as described by Levinas felt aesthetic if it was not, yet, fully aesthetic. But it was showing a way forward. I worked with Levinas for a while but without a breakthrough to how I might join ethics (politics) and aesthetics in a way that made sense. The Greeks had proposed a relationship between ethics and aesthetics without, in my estimation, a satisfactory understanding of the relationship. Even Mark Johnson’s work, which seemed, at the time, the most promising because most direct connection, was not satisfying. Levinas “felt” right but still didn’t quite measure up since Levinas, in this book, explicitly rejects the arts as having anything to do with ethics. What was to be done? I discovered that Jacques Derrida had critiqued Levinas for failing in his project. Levinas’ response was another book, Otherwise Than Being, in which I discovered the key to the ethics/aesthetics link, a link Levinas might not have recognized but I felt was what I had been seeking for 20 years. What is my point in providing this linear rendering of the progression of my thinking? It is several points. First, David’s challenge gave birth to the whole quest (not unlike Willy Wonka’s invitation to children to visit his world of pure imagination). The “final” result (“final” in the sense of I have arrived not at a stopping point but, more like, the point of real development) does not reveal the journey taken. That journey was filled with missteps, with hiatuses, with sudden lurches into understanding, retreats from such understanding as not adequate, experiments, side-tracks into other endeavors while the actual project lingered in the back of my mind. This lingering is similar to Alwin Nikolais’, (the great twentieth century choreographer) process for making his dances. He spoke of the “Rorschach of his mind” in which something happens while he is not paying attention. He might begin a choreography in a sketchy manner and then leave it for months on end to “collect itself” without his direct intervention. His thought was acting independently of him, allowing his “limbic” system to organize thought in ways his conscious mind could never conceive. So, too, with my process. Even when I wasn’t directly working on David’s challenge, it was lingering in my consciousness. The period of gestation was long, and, unlike the gestation of a baby, it did not have a finite calendar. But similarly, it required patience and waiting, prodding and leaving alone. It required repetition of some ideas (such as there is, I’m sure, a relationship between ethics and aesthetics, goodness and beauty, even if I didn’t yet know that relationship). It required expanding into

226

9 Reimagining Time

a larger and larger sphere of understanding, a form of eternity. It required patience and it required openness to something happening of which I could not know it would occur. In that sense, it required hope and trust in the process itself. Without that hope and trust I could not have stayed the course, could not have birthed the ideas that coalesced into an harmonious whole, just as a gestation yields a child who is an harmonious whole. (I understand that not every child comes out the way we would want, but that child is still her/his own harmonious whole.)

Time in Curricular Thinking What has been presented in this chapter? The chapter began with the notion of “personal, lived time.” This time has come to be seen as variable, elastic, sometimes moribund. “Personal, lived time” is more than “merely” personal. In recognizing its salience and centrality to how we live, its recognition can release us from the bondage of a culture that confines us within rigid categories of imposed identity (see Chapter 8 for more on identity). Release from such bondage can allow the time necessary (such necessity not being known beforehand) to reveal, to be, to become. We will keep striving all the while, for nothing happens if nothing happens. We keep “working at it” because without that there will be no learning. But we also know that there is no calculable time when a person will come to know or be or become. Time, in all its manifestations, is necessary for one to learn, to unlearn, to understand in order to, for a brief time, know before the unknowing overtakes us again and we must move on to re-question the world. The play of imagination, explored in more depth in other chapters, becomes a way of waiting and opening to possibility without forcing a situation with time prescriptions. It is conversations about this that we need in Curriculum Studies. I do not, frankly, know how curriculum might reply to these ideas of time. It could take many forms. My own dance experience occurred in a highly structured environment, dedicated to becoming a professional modern dancer and yet, I would say, time as I have presented time here, played a crucial role in my accomplishing my desired end of becoming a professional modern dancer. Time admitted me to myself. No less true is this for the learners in our classrooms. There is no formula for time to be applied uniformly in all situations. In reimagining curriculum, this will mean letting go of our pre-conceptions of education. It will mean taking the time or recognizing time and, in so doing, help our learners learn. It really will mean, stop “trying” and begin to live with our social contract of living together now truly in our hands and not in the hands of the clock.

References

227

References Blumenfeld-Jones, D. S. (2012). Curriculum and the aesthetic life: Hermeneutics, body, democracy, and ethics in curriculum theory and practice. NYC: Peter Lang. Doctorow, E. L. (2014). Doctorow ruminates on how a “brain” becomes a mind. NPR interview. In Weekend Edition Saturday. NPR. Guerlac, S. (2017). Thinking in time: An introduction to Henri Bergson. Cornell University Press. Huebner, D. (1999). Curriculum as a concern for man’s temporality. In V. Hillis, & W. F. Pinar (Eds.), The lure of the transcendent: Collected essays by Dwayne E. Huebner (pp. 131–142). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Kristeva, J. (1986). Women’s time. In T. Moi (Ed.), The Kristeva reader. Columbia University Press. Lakoff, G. (1990). Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. University of Chicago Press. Muldoon, M. (1991). Time, Self, and Meaning in the Works of Henri Bergson, Maurice MerleauPonty, and Paul Ricoeur. In Philosophy Today, 35(3), 254–268. Macdonald, J. B. (1995). Living democratically in schools: Cultural pluralism. In Theory as a Prayerful Act: The Collected Essays of James B. Macdonald (pp. 127–136). NYC: Peter Lang. Snow, C. P. (1993). Two cultures. Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 10

Epilogue—Living a Mosaical Life, Living Ironically

Abstract In the Epilogue the idea of mosaical thinking is extended to the act of “living mosaically.” Such living involves pursuing multiple, distinct projects which may not appear to be connected to each other but are bound together by the acts of a mosaical liver. Mosaical living requires time and patience. The act of writing is performed not to record what one knows but rather to come to know what one thinks is taken as exemplary of mosaical living. To explore these ideas, the genesis of the book is discussed as a way of imaging mosaical living. Living ironically is discussed as core to dialectical unlearning and necessary to mosaical thinking, writing, and living. Keywords Dialectics · Freedom · Unlearning This book has been organized around the idea of “mosaical thinking.” Looking back on the book and the experience of conceptualizing it as well as the experience of organizing it, writing new writing and retrieving and modifying old writing I have come to reimagine the idea of “mosaical” as more than just a way of thinking. It is a way of writing, and, still more, a way of living. A mosaical way of living is, over time, exploring multiple themes and topics, not necessarily related to each other. Eventually you may find an image of the scope of that relationship emerging. Such a mosaic cannot be forged without recognizing the time it takes for each of the elements to mature and become clearer. Then, at some point, these elements may come together or be brought together in the kind of work presented here. But that penultimate work cannot have come to be without living mosaically, even, so it may seem sometimes, chaotically, or randomly. Writing and thinking mosaically involves trusting that, through the writing process, connections and new ideas can emerge. E.L. Doctorow, the novelist, and Robert Calasso, the publisher and writer, noted the importance of the act of writing itself for the emergence of understanding. Doctorow stated the reason he writes: “I write to know what I am thinking” (NPR, 2014). In Robert Calasso’s book, “The Celestial Hunter,” Calasso, described writing as something akin to the primordial urge to hunt. “A book is written when there is something specific that has to be discovered,” he wrote. “The writer doesn’t know what it is, nor where it is, but knows it has to be. (Alter, 2021) © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 D. S. Blumenfeld-Jones, Reimagining Curriculum Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9877-4_10

229

230

10 Epilogue—Living a Mosaical Life, Living Ironically

This present book has been an act of using writing to come to know thoughts not yet evident. It has been such a hunt as described by Calasso. The experience of writing this book has been a constant exploration in which ideas and connections constantly revealed themselves through the act of writing. For me, it remains an unfinished hunt, an unfinished mosaic. Even as I read this book, while having written it, the act of reading has become a further hunt, and a further construction of a mosaic. And for you, the reader, you are constructing your own mosaic. In this epilogue, I want to give a concrete flavor of what it means to “write mosaically,” to construct thoughts in an emergent, always evolving manner, in order to “live mosaically” through the act of reading and writing.

Origins of Mosaical Thinking and Writing My previous books took one of two forms. My first book (2012) was a compilation of my work over many years, organized into thematized sections within which I gathered work that, in one way or another, addressed the overarching theme of the section. In the section introductions, I meditated upon how the various writings addressed themes internal to the section. Beyond this, there was no attempt to join the various writings together within a section or between sections. This book was nascently, although not consciously, mosaical as I wove together aesthetics, hermeneutics, body, democracy, ethics, and curriculum theory. My second book (2016a) was a more linear book, walking the reader through conventional ethics, leading on to Emmanuel Levinas’ ethics, concluding with an application of those ethics to curriculum thinking and teaching. This book was fully linear (not mosaical) as I built a case for why Levinasian ethics made sense as a basis for curriculum thinking and teaching. My third book (2016b) was a typical edited book, presenting the various components of a teacher education program I created with the help of colleagues, Again, this was a book with but one theme developed across multiple platforms. This present book and the idea of mosaical thinking and writing was not the original impulse. When I began considering this book I had only one topic in mind: pure imagination. I found this topic through my re-encounter with the “Pure Imagination” song in a TV ad. I began to consider its implications for Curriculum Studies. How might it play in the practice of curriculum designing and development? How might it affect the practice of scholarship? How might it be a “topic” of curriculum that could provide some re-invention of the field? These questions quickly morphed into seeing the song as presenting some model for practice and thought. I intended to write a book developing the idea of imagination through this trope. As I began to inquire into imagination, I found that the literature I encountered fascinated and repelled me. It fascinated by providing both a history of imagination (Richard Kearny’s The Wake of Imagination, 1998) and the writing of sophisticated postmodern thinkers (Gayatri Spivak’s An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization, 2013). It repelled because these thinkers seemed to have no contact with a life of imagination

Origins of Mosaical Thinking and Writing

231

as a lived experience. I began to take notes on the readings and to write but the writing didn’t seem to connect with anything beyond itself. On a parallel but seemingly disconnected track, I have been thinking about a rift I have perceived within the Curriculum Studies field for some time. The first chapter of this book addresses that rift, although obliquely. I felt that imagination, the arts, aesthetics, ethics, and teacher education, which had at some point seemingly, potentially, had had a place of value in the field (Eliot Eisner as AERA President and Elizabeth Vallance as Division B V-P, my own time as Division B V-P) seemed to have no meaning to the field now. I feel the field has become obsessed with leftist social justice and the politics of identity, marginalizing any other interests or concerns in Curriculum Studies. I have no quarrel with the legitimacy of social justice concerns but to make them the exclusive concern seemed against the possibility of an ecumenicism of topics and of voices from the several sectors of the field that could work against its balkanization. In response to my sense of the field, I began to develop a critique of the field as being caught in what Alice Miel characterized as “crystallization.” I thought this work of critique might possibly refresh the field through acts of what I have named “dialectical unlearning.” But what did this have to do with “pure imagination”? Only the writing of this book could answer that question. At the same time of working on these two projects, I had also turned my attention to time and education. My interest connected with a sense I had had over the years that the idea of “slow education” carried some meaning as to, for instance, how I conceptualized the Masters programs in which I taught. I considered those programs as opportunities for teachers to take a step back, to stop and think, to slow down, to imagine where they might go next in their teaching. I began by exploring the slow education movement (which is modeled on the slow food movement) but found it insufficiently theorized and conceptualized. I turned to a more nuanced exploration of time through Bergson and others. I saw learning as a rhythmic process of engagement and contemplation with no stipulated calendar to which one had to adhere. This brought to mind Julia Kristeva’s essay “Women’s Time” which I had encountered in graduate school. I had not remembered and was surprised to discover that she invoked imagination as central to addressing the issues she raised. There was now a beginning linkage between seemingly distinct interests (time and imagination). This book presented the opportunity to further think through these relationships. Of all the topics in this book, prior to working on this book, freedom had not been an original concern of mine. In my work on “wild imagination” (2016), freedom had arisen as an issue for imagination as I discovered the writing of some Black social theorists who, in different ways, attempted to account for freedom as an important component of their thinking about the arts and imagination. In particular, Robin G. Kelley’s (2002) Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination moved beyond the typical use of imagination in service of a political project toward acts of imagination as their own kind of social critique without demanding particular political positions. His freeing of imagination from the shackles of standard politics felt freeing. Freedom became more important with the onset of the pandemic. Mask-wearing refusers insisted on their personal rights to not wear masks, that their liberty was being

232

10 Epilogue—Living a Mosaical Life, Living Ironically

trampled upon by mask mandates. For them, individual liberty took precedence over any public interest. Vaccination rejectors, similarly, cried “personal freedom over my body” in refusing to get vaccinated. In a sense both positions were (and are) saying that individual life was equivalent with the state, just as Louis XIV had declared: “L’etat, c’est moi.” I was shocked by this and felt I needed to address what I took to be a thorough-going misunderstanding of freedom. Martin Buber’s “Education” essay features freedom and imagination. Once again imagination emerged as an important component of education thinking. Additionally, the most substantive book on freedom in Curriculum Studies was written by Maxine Greene (The Dialectic of Freedom), one of our most eminent thinkers on imagination and education who had turned to freedom as an important topic. So, as with the “Pure Imagination” encounter and subsequent inquiry into imagination and as with Kristeva’s avowal of imagination as core to addressing the confusions of our day, so with freedom. Here was imagination once again. Something was beginning to emerge. The already published work in this book also dealt with imagination. However, it was not enough that they dealt with imagination. The identity chapter presents a direct response to the politics of identity. The chapter on teacher education reminds us that curriculum studies is not an abstract practice and life nor a practice about the larger culture alone. To the degree that the dominant sector of our Curriculum Studies community has become, I would claim, dissociated from schools and daily curriculum practice, to that degree I think we have lost what Schwab claimed we had lost: a connection to the everyday life of schools. I wanted it clear and continue to wish to make it clear that this book is about curriculum studies at its core as a location for thinking through education in our schools (all schools). Imagination began to emerge as an overarching concern that went beyond its value as a “thing” and carried me into the world in what appeared to me to be important ways. I was back with the original impetus for this work but now it became an opportunity to bring together disparate interests and concerns in one place, having them brush up against each other and see what might emerge. I was less concerned with coherence of thought, as I had been in the previous books, wasn’t even sure if there would be such coherence and through lines of connectivity. I felt that it is an open question that we ought to make consistent, coherent, unified sense. Perhaps it is enough for sparks to be generated that fly off in multiple directions.

Living a Mosaical Life In keeping with this image of mosaical thinking, so, too, is a human being’s life possibly lived mosaically. For some people life involves wondering about and exploring, over time, without a necessarily coherent “plan,” different concerns, interests, and questions. These concerns, interests, and questions may appear unrelated to each other but are, in ways not always apparent, connected through the person doing the wondering. It matters not the constellation of concerns, interests, and questions one brings together. If they come from the same person and that person is willing to

Living a Mosaical Life

233

trust that there are themes in her/his life that cohabitate her or his life in a way that “makes sense” for that person, then sense can be made. In truth, if each of us is a constellation of multiple concerns, interests, and questions, then any singular image is misleading. It does not reflect the truth of our lives. This idea of mosaical living appeared late in the process of this book. I noticed the range of sources, some from my first days in this field, some from very recent times. I had kept them all around simply because they appealed to me in ways I would be hard put to explain. Looking at the final draft of this book, I noticed that presence in work covering early work to work of very recent vintage. They seemed to belong together although not necessarily addressing the same questions. Thinking of James B. Macdonald’s work, looking at the collection of his essays (1995) it is clear his was a restless mind, exploring multiple sets of ideas that did not necessarily belong together. This is what makes his work so complex and rich (and mysterious). I said, in the Introduction to this book that Macdonald stands as an inspiration to me. That inspiration is not one of topic or theme but of a way of exploring that is not worried about crossing boundaries. We human beings are a synthesis of various influences. So, we might understand our scholarly life as such a synthesis. What is the mosaical life, then? It is a life composed of many discrete interests/ concerns/questions. Separately each can be pursued/analyzed/examined/addressed with a monocular focus. In the meantime, the other discrete elements hover in the background, sometimes close to top of mind, sometimes well-hidden and seemingly not in play. What is it that makes these discrete elements, taken together, as of one mind? It is, as I noted above, the person doing the work. While that person is more than the sum of these elements, these elements as a “coherent” pattern or mosaic are explicit dimensions of the person as a whole. This image should not be pushed too far. Unlike a finished mosaic, this life never completely coheres into a complete and finished image. There are loops and incomplete loops and recursive experiences that seem either repetitive or reveal a slightly different view of a similar phenomenon. There are empty spaces that go unfulfilled. As you read this book you may find leaps of thought for which there is not a full accounting. You may find disjunctures that make no sense to you. You may feel questions raised but not completely answered or not satisfactorily answered. This life is never a complete image, not purposefully, but simply the character of living. Perhaps this life is one of those ancient mosaics with many missing tiles and you must guess at the original, complete image. The image of a mosaic is simply the closest I can come to describing this way of thinking, writing, and living. There is another way to think about this mosaical living. William Pinar proposed the idea of a complicated conversation (2005). He forwarded it in the interests of bringing about an internationalization of Curriculum Studies which would “support intellectual breakthrough, in our academic fields, in ourselves as individual scholars participating in an academic community, and in the school curricula studied by children in the nations where we work” (2015, p. 5). He saw this conversation “as collaborative investigation and consultation with others as well as that dialogical encounter occasioned by the conferences” (2015, p. 8). A complicated conversation requires a,

234

10 Epilogue—Living a Mosaical Life, Living Ironically

“certain solitude” in order to have this “complicated conversation” with oneself without which one disappears onto the social surface, into the maelstrom that is the public world. Without a private life, without an ongoing project of autobiographical understanding, one’s intellectual “practice” too often tends toward the miming of what is fashionable or profitable.” (2005, p. 12)

Pinar warns against dwelling in an “interiority” that might be “misrecognized as ‘the world’” (2005, p. 13) On the other hand, An “organic” intellectual’s relation to the “multitude” (Hardt & Negri, 2000: 61) necessarily includes one’s relationship with one’s self, one’s self-reflexive articulation of one’s subjectivity. It is through subjectivity that one experiences history and society, and through which history and society speak. (2005, p. 13)

It is worth reminding ourselves, as Pinar does, that our public intellectual selves cannot speak for the public if we do not speak for our private, interior selves. I have emphasized, repeatedly, that the personal is political, that catch phrase from the 60s feminist movement. In this book I have repeatedly used my own experiences as lodestones for analysis, never for narcissistic purposes. Each of us, whether we acknowledge it, or not, function from the personal, from the private, from our subjectivities. This mosaical living isn’t a generic living but a lived experience each of us may undergo in an immediate way. With all the above, what is the value of seeing one’s life as a mosaic? How does this change anything? To think of living mosaically acknowledges that our lives are complex, never reducible to one or two interests. To treat any particular focus as truly stand-alone misses the reality of the complexity of any situation, certainly misses the complexity of Curriculum Studies. When Peter Hlebowitsch (see Chapter 3 “Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom”) calls for a return to an agreed upon center for Curriculum Studies, he, by default, denies the true complexity of our field. While we might stipulate a center from which we all might work, such stipulation does a disservice to the chosen center as every center one might choose is always a false center since, dialectically, it banishes its döppelganger to the margins of the field, making the chosen center an arbitrarily chosen center. Beyond this dualistic image, a mosaical life acknowledges that there are multiple potential moments of focus which, as I have already asserted, can be taken, as a whole constellation, to emanate from the wholeness of a person and are bound together through that wholeness. It is never a complete wholeness that becomes present. If anything, such a pursuit constantly questions: “Who am I in the world with others?” It addresses a desire to try and better understand this person that is each of us. Given that everyone is complex in these ways, to write and think mosaically is to provide a reference image for others to acknowledge and uncover their own mosaical being. To live this life is to enact what Camus said of the intellectual (to repeat his sentiment cited at the beginning of Chapter 3: “An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. “Can they be brought together?” This is a practical question. We must get down to it. “I despise intelligence” really means: “I cannot bear my doubts.”

Living a Mosaical Life

235

We watch ourselves to discover ourselves and as we do so we are aware that we are watching. In this awareness, we are trying to assemble a person we want to be and notice our tendencies, our foibles, and that which brings us joy and a sense of wholeness. Camus asks “Can [the watcher and the watched] be brought together?” He calls this a “practical question.” Mosaical thinking cannot guarantee a life brought together but, given it reflects this process of bringing together in one place (it was always in one place: each of our selves) disparate threads of our lives, being conscious of our lives as mosaical might facilitate an understanding of ourselves that allows us to accept what might seem, otherwise, chaotic and disjointed decisions and actions. This makes mosaical thinking and living practical because it is dealing with the everyday truth of our lives.

Living Ironically In Chapter 3, on dialectical unlearning, the emphasis was on living within the tensions of conjoined opposites. This tension is ensconced, per force, within a life of irony. William Butler Yeats (1956) provides the image of irony I intend. The Great Day Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot! A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot. Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again! The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.

This poem is clearly ironic as a revolution meant to upend the world and bring about improvement changes nothing. The two people in the poem are both beggars. The horse person is a beggar in the world as it is and wants to change that world so that s/he is no longer a beggar. The one on foot and being lashed is the person with power and privilege, but still characterized by Yeats as a beggar. Underneath the clothing of class and power and powerlessness, we are all the same: beggars. Once the original revolution achieves its aims another revolution occurs in which the person who was in power, and is now a beggar, becomes the one on horseback and the new revolutionary. In this scenario presented by Yeats, nothing changes as the structure of the relationships of the world remains unchanged. We might think that our revolutions will change everything. In fact, they may change nothing as the social relationships and the status of the categories remains in place. The world is structured in such a way that change is prevented from occurring, except in a superficial way (the men have changed places). This image is supplemented by another meaning of the word “revolution.” Literally, revolution means a circle constantly repeating itself. Revolution is a constant repeating of its shape until you don’t know where you are on the arc or where the arc is in relation to up and down, side to side, diagonal to diagonal, and all the other points on that circle. There may be no dismounting that revolution. Perhaps we must humbly recognize that the circle may be returning us to the very place we sought to escape.

236

10 Epilogue—Living a Mosaical Life, Living Ironically

This is an irony of thorough-going skepticism. Such skepticism, such an ironic cast of mind does not mean that we should do nothing to foster change. But it does mean that we should be humble as to what we think we are doing. It does not prevent us from hoping for a future, but that hope is combined with an honest despair that we are accomplishing nothing. In fact, hope and despair may belong together. So wrote Gabriel Marcel (1949) of this relationship between hope and despair: It seems to me that the conditions that make it possible to hope are strictly the same as those which make it possible to despair. Death considered as the springboard of an absolute hope. A world where death was missing would be a world where hope only existed in the larval stage. (p. 93)

Hope is empty (is not yet born, is larval) without this understanding. Marcel also wrote that the only thing that gave a prisoner-of-war hope was his or her despair that s/he would never escape. Only in this despair in which there is no lower in spirit to go did s/he find the hope to try again. What might be a Curriculum Studies form of despair? It might be that we will not live to see our hopes fulfilled. David Purpel (personal communication) was once asked what he meant by spirituality, since he clearly didn’t mean a particular religion. David replied, Spirituality means to me that even though each day I arise, the world has not changed, and I might despair it will ever change, I also start each day hoping for that change. I can’t explain why I have such hope. In that lack of explanation is my feeling about spirituality.

So, each fraction of our community despairs that their various hopes for curriculum will ever be realized. Perhaps each of us despairs that our fractiousness will always prevent us from moving forward, whatever “moving forward” might mean. In treating some of our community as the enemies of our own projects, we repeat Yeats image of revolution. Those left behind who we might see as enemies of our projects, are not enemies. In Yeats’ terms, we are both beggars. When we bar some of our community from participation, when we sideline them, our actions are fraught with the possibility that we are offering no change because the underlying world structure (Heidegger’s “world picture” discussed in Chapter 1) holds all of us in place in a rigid way. Eventually we will be supplanted. We might consider how writing some of our community out of the story of Curriculum Studies may in fact be writing ourselves out of the story. Within this ironic frame, perhaps we need another way. Perhaps that other way is an embracing of the complexity of our world, not the political move that supports revolution as described by Yeats. In lieu of such a move, our scholarly life becomes merely a power struggle for who is “on top” which only fates the field (to use Habermas’ term, see Chapter 3) to remain under the spell of this delusional illness about change. An ironic cast of mind keeps us understanding that we do not know and cannot know in any final way, which leaves us open to multiple perspectives and a life of dialogue.

Finis

237

Finis In this epilogue there has been no summarizing and turning the work into aphoristic statements. This book is offered as an opportunity to try on the mosaical clothing and life of irony as well as encounter perhaps some new (or rediscovered) ideas about Curriculum Studies. As with my experience of Betty Jones’ teaching and my conclusion that I could not even pretend to understand her without whole-heartedly trying to live in my body as she lived in hers (Chapter 3 on dialectical unlearning), to understand this book is to live in this book. Thank you for reading. May this book provide some help in reimagining Curriculum Studies.

References Alter, A. (2021). Roberto Calasso, Renaissance Man of Letters, Dies at 80 in NY Times. Blumenfeld-Jones, D. S. (2012). Curriculum and the aesthetic life: Hermeneutics, body, democracy, and ethics in curriculum theory and practice. NY: Peter Lang. Blumenfeld-Jones, D. S. (2016a). Ethics, aesthetics, and education: A levinasian approach. London: Palgrave. Blumenfeld-Jones, D. S. (Ed.). (2016b). Teacher education for the 21st Century: Creativity, aesthetics and ethics in preparing teachers for our future. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Doctorow, E. L. (2014). Doctorow ruminates on how a “Brain” becomes a mind. NPR interview. Weekend Edition Saturday. NYC: NPR. Greene, M. (1988). The dialectic of freedom. Teachers College Press. Kearny, R. (1998). The wake of imagination: Toward a postmodern culture. Routledge. Kelley, R. G. (2002). Freedom dreams: The black radical imagination. Beacon Press. Macdonald, B. J. (1995). Theory as a prayerful act: The collected essays of James B. Macdonald. Peter Lang. Marcel, G. (1949). Being and having (K. Farrar, Trans.). The University Press. Pinar, W. F. (2005). Complicated conversation: Occasions for “intellectual breakthrough” in the internationalization of curriculum studies. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 1(1), 1–26. Spivak, G. (2013). An aesthetic education in the era of globalization. Harvard University. Yeats, W. B. (1956). The great day. In The collected poems of W. B. Yeats: Definitive edition with the author’s final revisions (p. 309). The Macmillan.