Sapere Aude

Posted on 7th February 2015 by NomadWarMachine

In 1784 Kant asked a question: What is Enlightenment? His answer was that it was having the courage to use one’s own reason: Sapere Aude –  dare to be wise. In order for this to happen, he said, we must be free to publicly air our views  about injustices we perceive, while privately obeying the laws of the state.  So as a citizen I must pay my taxes, as a scholar I can (must!) at the same time argue that is it immoral of the Tory government to give tax cuts to the rich while at the same time making devastating cuts to public services.  Note, as Foucault does, in his 1974 essay of the same name, that this is a twist on the usual interpretation of freedom of conscience, which is the ” the right to think as one pleases so long as one obeys as one must”.  Kant is not interested in giving us a right to think as we please in private, rather he imposes upon us, as intellectuals, a duty to speak up publicly when the State is unfair, or allows injustice. I am not always a fan of Kant, but this seems right: if I see injustice and have a public voice then I should use that voice to fight for what is right.

I remembered this earlier this week when I read Giroux* talking about “the responsibility of teachers as public intellectuals”.  Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose?

* Giroux, Henri. (2011) On Critical Pedagogy p73

Portrait of Immanuel Kant by unspecified (/History/Carnegie/kant/portrait.html) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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Being a good libertarian

Posted on 4th February 2015 by NomadWarMachine

There are a few passages is Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed where he talks about (or is translated as talking about) libertarian education.  For example:

The raison d’etre of libertarian education, on the other hand, lies in its drive towards reconciliation. Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.

This was troubling me, as I associate libertarianism with the neoliberalism of Reagan and Thatcher (and we Scots really, really do not like Thatcher).  But then I realised (see my earlier post from today) that it was also possible to be a left libertarian, and further that this was actually where my political sympathies already lay – and that although I’d always called myself an anarchist, libertarian socialist was a much neater way of describing my political beliefs.

The term “libertarian” has an idiosyncratic usage in the US and Canada, reflecting, I suppose, the unusual power of business in these societies. In the European tradition, “libertarian socialism” (“socialisme libertaire”) was the anti-state branch of the socialist movement: anarchism (in the European, not the US sense). (Chomsky, interview from the Leiter Reports)

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Political compass

Posted on 4th February 2015 by NomadWarMachine

pcgraphpng

A lot of us talk about people being left wing or right wing, but actually there is also another axis on which to measure: authoritarian/libertarian.  There is a political compass that you can use to check out where you lie on this – this is mine. I go back and check from time to time to make sure I am not “making peace with the establishment”.  It seems that I am not 🙂

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The pedagogical is always political

Posted on 2nd February 2015 by NomadWarMachine

337px-Fist.svgI grew up hearing the feminist mantra that “the personal is political” (I always misquote that, and add an “always”, maybe because I believe it needs to be emphasised). It means different things to different people, but to me it means that humans are not discrete individuals who are parachuted into society at birth, we are born into a culture and are inextricably interlinked with other people.  No (hu)man is an island.  As Aristotle says, a (hu)man is a zoon politikon – (a political, or social, animal) – it is part of our nature to be thus.  My personal actions have an effect upon those around me, as do theirs on me – the personal is also political.

It has a more sinister undertone, as well, for me.  It reminds me that I am part of a 21st century capitalist society, whether I like it or not, and all of my actions and all of my thoughts are a result of the State Apparatus that looms over us all.  I was educated by the State, for the good of the State.  Here by the grace of the State go I.

And there is more.  The State educated the educators, and the State dictates the curriculum: the pedagogical is also political.

So, for me, the problem with modern pedagogy is not that it is not political, it is rather that it is political in the wrong way.  It reinforces a neo-liberal ideology.  The pedagogical does not need to be more  political, but it does need a better politics to drive it.

[I]t seems imperative that educators revitalize the struggles to create conditions in which learning would be linked to social change in a wide variety of social sites, and pedagogy would take on the task of regenerating both a renewed sense of social and political agency and a critical subversion of dominant power itself (Giroux, On Critical Pedagogy, p71).

Enter the Nomad War Machine …

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A poet who didn’t know it?

Posted on 30th January 2015 by NomadWarMachine

I have been introduced to the rather lovely Poetweet which has made this for me and this

In principle
by Sarah Honeychurch

You should meet and
When the speaker does not engage.
I’m calling on to stop in Scotland
Aye, it could be the first stage.

I’d like an account, please.
Will try to do one about discomfort
Only, feel free to paraphrase
Thoughts. Tired, so very short:

End. Call me Wendy, not Norman 😉
About rhizomes and dandelions
I am not a number, I am a free man
Start gives wrong connotations
Great quote by Scott Freeman

*******************************

Agree norms
by Sarah Honeychurch

Is a useful eye opener 2/2
😛 Will keep my eyes peeled
Earlier, then had to cook dinner

Teaching. Love the “human” aspect
Are also good to read alongside
Would that be a subtellect?

Change that as soon as I get home

Forward to meeting you in Scotland.

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Uncomfortable thoughts

Posted on 30th January 2015 by NomadWarMachine

A philosophical problem has the form: “I don’t know my way about”.  Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 123

Philosophy makes my head hurt. It’s hard, and it makes me think, and it challenges me to justify my inchoate beliefs when I just want to relax and watch TV.  It’s confusing, and it’s challenging, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  And sometimes it makes me, and my students, think about uncomfortable things.

I care about my students – I really do.  I try to make my classes safe spaces for them to learn how to do philosophy.  I structure and scaffold tutorials so that they can gain confidence in their abilities, and sometimes I leave the room so that they can talk without feeling so self-conscious.  I try to make them feel comfortable practising philosophy, and learning to voice their philosophical opinions.  But sometimes it is necessary to cause them mental discomfort – to get them to think through moral and political problems:

  • Is eating meat murder?
  • Is euthanasia morally permissible?
  • How should we treat our criminals?
  • Why do we have a Tory government (can we blow up Westminster)?
  • And so forth.

And these issues are hard to think about.

We talked about this in our #moocmooc chat this week, and all but one of us were agreeing that discomfort was not a bad thing, and we were not sociopaths for (sometimes) trying to cause our students such feelings.

But sometimes I just want to switch off.  I want to watch TV, play with my cats or do my knitting without a million pesky thoughts flying around in my head.  As Wittgenstein says:

The real discovery is the one which enables me to stop doing philosophy when I want to. The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 133

Image by KylaMay from Deviant Art http://kylamay.deviantart.com/<br />
art/The-Confused-24558778

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Posh white boys

Posted on 26th January 2015 by NomadWarMachine

Raphael [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/ Raphael_School_of_Athens.jpg

There’s a common assumption that there is a gender bias in STEM subjects in HE, but a recent study released in Science has discovered that this is not  actually the real story, and that actually philosophy is among the five subjects with the fewest women (the others are engineering, computer science, physics, and music composition.) while some STEM subjects have about 50% of PhDs being women.

This does not come as surprising news to me.  As a philosophy undergrad in the 90s it was noticeable that there were no female members of academic staff, and I am used to reading articles with titles like this: ‘Philosophy is for posh, white boys with trust funds’ – why are there so few women?  The Science researchers propose a reason:

We hypothesize that, across the academic spectrum, women are underrepresented in fields whose practitioners believe that raw, innate talent is the main requirement for success, because women are stereotyped as not possessing such talent.

Maybe it is because of the emphasis on analytical thought that so many of the UK Philosophy Departments have, maybe it could learn from (whisper!) the “Continentals”, or even (shudder!) women, or maybe it is something else, but I think that it is a problem.  Jenny Saul agrees, for example arguing that women in philosophy find themselves subjects of implicit bias and stereotype threat. (This might require an institutional login.)

However, if we look at the history of Philosophy then we find that pretty much all of the canonical texts are written by men.  And that means that even those of us who are female and teach still need to use men’s voices to do so for the most part.

This tweet caught my eye earlier:

So true, and so hard to do when all that is available is written by posh white boys.

Raphael [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Posted in #MoocMooc, Critical pedagogy, Philosophy, University | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Along the way, take time to smell the flowers

Posted on 22nd January 2015 by NomadWarMachine
apple blossom from one of the trees in  our garden.

apple blossom from one of the trees in  our garden.

I love gardening, and I am also fond of gardening metaphors.  It’s one of the many things I like about Deleuze and Guattari’s metaphor (?) of the rhizome and  Dave Cormier’s rhizomatic learning – the botanical themes that run through and produce fruitful (pun intended) images for me to explore.  I was going to link to one of Dave’s blog posts – he has one where he describes explaining something to his son by analogy with his fight against the Japanese Knotweed in his yard, but his blog is down so I’ll link to this instead, where both Dave and I reach for similar metaphors to try and explain what rhizomatic learning is.

 

dandelion from: http://wildplantdatabase.net/imageDetail.asp?imageID=2296

dandelion from: http://wildplantdatabase.net/imageDetail.asp?imageID=2296

In my garden at home I have a constant struggle to keep down the weeds.  Although Maha hates removing the weeds from her garden, I see it as necessary for the greater good.  Some might think that I’m an elitist about plants – but I am really not.  I buy the theory that one person’s weed is another person’s flower, that a weed is just a plant in the wrong place,  all of that can be true.  But in my garden if I do not remove (some of) the weeds my pretty flowers and tasty veg will not be able to thrive.  So I have to remove the pernicious weeds in order that the most pleasing and useful can survive.  (Where I do have problems is in thinning out plants – once my tomato seedlings start to grow I cannot bear to sacrifice any of them, but that’s another story.)

So what is my educational point?  Well, I guess it is something like this.  Teaching and learning is a bit like tending a garden.  We provide a suitable environment (or do the best with the one we find ourselves in), we prepare the ground, plant the seeds and do our best to nurture them as they grow.  We try to stop the weeds from choking them and the slugs from eating them, especially when they are tiny, and we provide some structure for them to grow into.

Deleuze and Guattari use the metaphor of the rhizome as a story (poem? free form jazz performance?) about what knowledge might be like (and Dave and Keith Hamon have done a lot of writing trying to tease this out).  This is a reminder that rhizomes are not always pretty and easy to digest.  They work underground, building their connections and moving in directions that were not anticipated.  They can rear up at any time and in any place and are incredibly hard to eradicate.  That’s the dark underbelly of all of this, and it both gives me hope and makes me afraid.

Fuschias in my garden

Fuschias in my garden

There’s also a phrase I say a lot, at least to myself, that I think one of my sisters used to have on a poster in her bedroom (you know the sort I mean – with cute likkle animals and platitudinous slogans), about taking the time to smell the flowers.  In my head, it’s a reminder to myself that I  need to enjoy my learning journey, and pay attention to voices that are singing different tunes from mine, because they can enrich my thinking in unexpected ways (those unknown unknowns, as you might say).  so at some point during the #moocmooc chat last night, I replied with this:

…and then, a whole conversation ensued, which I have storified here.

Posted in #MoocMooc, #rhizo14, D&G, Learning, Rhizomes | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

Walk this way

Posted on 21st January 2015 by NomadWarMachine

Critical pedagogy, it is suggested, is an approach that shows, rather than tells.  In a similar vein, Wittgenstein tells us don’t think, but look!1

So am I walking the way I want to walk?  Are students really  well advised to watch me and do thus and so? In my head I am competent, erudite, graceful.

But I suspect the reality is more like this:

http://youtu.be/9ZlBUglE6Hc

1. Section 66

 

 

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Capitalism and Exclusion

Posted on 20th January 2015 by NomadWarMachine

Once we had leper colonies, places to isolate the diseased and hide them from public view.  They are closed now, in the Western world, and on the whole I doubt many of us would believe that leprosy was a sign both of [God’s] anger and of His grace”1  , and that justified a leper’s total exclusion from society.

But the structures by which to “other” and exclude were never removed, and other categories of outcasts – the vagabond, the criminal, the insane – all take their turn in the Ship of Fools.  Cast adrift from mainstream society, those “not-us” and “not-like-us” are hidden from view, from thought, from care.

And the structures remain. And the attitudes towards those who are not like us persist. And the capitalist machine feeds on the anger, and envy, and greed that it encourages.  And some oppress, and many others are oppressed.

To achieve this end, the oppressors use the banking concept of education in conjunction with a paternalistic social action apparatus, within which the oppressed receive the euphemistic title of “welfare recipients.” They are treated as individual cases, as marginal persons who deviate from the general configuration of a “good, organized, and just” society. The oppressed are regarded as the pathology of the healthy society, which must therefore adjust these “incompetent and lazy” folk to its own patterns by changing their mentality. These marginals need to be “integrated,” “incorporated” into the healthy society that they have “forsaken.”2

Fast forward to 21st century Britain.  The right wing government, no longer satisfied with robbing the poor taxpayer to feed its corporate friends, is creating a new set of pariahs for us to shun – the poor.  We must curtail the welfare state – not because we cannot afford it, but because it does not fit with right wing ideals. Benefit scroungers are robbing upright citizens of their cash – austerity is the fault of the poor, not the fault of those who rule.

The Tories would have us believe that it is necessary for our society to “reform” the sick and the poor so that they no longer rely on “handouts”, to find them work and thus make them full members of society.

But they are already part of us. They are not outsiders, they are not other.  The capitalist state and its party politics are the things in need of reform, and only by transforming our society can we all become beings-for-ourselves.

1. Foucault, Madness and Civilization p6

2. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed p74

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