Dear Alan,
If my evocative and uninhibited writing tempts you into the risky space of
sharing your poetry of Auschwitz then perhaps I can see a connection, for
the very first time, between the effect of writing and my artistry of
educational relationships.
You have seen me falter in my own struggle to be inclusive. You have seen
me write to colleagues in ways that I call scarifying.
By scarifying I mean a way of writing that starts out from an intention to
break and loosen up the surface soil of their thinking about whiteness,
about colonialism and postcolonialism, about state violence as racism [1].
To remove dead and moss-like uncritical thinking. Particularly moss-like
thinking that inhibits a new grass of critical thinking and theorising
about the nature of hegemonic practice with first, second AND third person
tendrils [2].
We both know how my hubris, a hubris that feeds the 'Vampire Archetype',
shifted my writing, perhaps unconsciously, towards injuring the feelings
of others by the severity and abrasiveness of my criticism.
With this account in mind, I really enjoy your thinking here,
This has great bearing on our
> educational practice. Do we persist in subjugating our practice to the
> logical limits we have imposed upon nature and ourselves in order to
gain a
> false sense of security by working within prescriptive structures? Do we
> find improvisational ways of opening up our enquiries to the flow-forms
of
> new possibilities, allowing our activities to be guided by emergent
> structures (dynamic boundaries/living standards of judgement)?
I have chosen in favour of finding improvisational ways of opening up my
enquiries with others to (the flow-forms of) new possibilities. Evidence?
I believe the evocative and uninhibited artistry of my educational
relationships can tempt students into the risky space of sharing. Some
times a sharing that is affirming, sometimes a sharing that is
disconcerting. But the point is, in an educational sense, I tempt the
other towards a 'risk to share'. I liken this to Marcel's delightful
notion of being mune in mutual availabilty to what the future might hold.
In turn this is how I make sense of what you call dynamic boundaries. You
know Alan: my great grandmother and grandmother lived in dynamic
boundaries in South Africa with white men, and their 'Coloured' children.
Songa Mbele
Yaqub
[1] I include the state violence that can occlude the humanity of you and
I in order to perpetrate Auschwitz
[2] By third person I mean a material sociocultural and political reality
that pre-exists my 'I'. I also include within my meaning propositional and
spectator theories (after Dewey, 1925) that do not explain my 'real life'
(after McNiff et al, 2002), but help me to make sense of my situation
within Western hegemonic practices through the kind of explanations that
take account of material power relations. I am aware that non-
western states have hegemonic practices, too. In thee states the power
relations of oppression tend to mimic 'internal colonization'. Whereas
Western hegemonic practices oppress both interally and externally (Native
Americans and Chicano oppression is simultaneous with the geo-spatial
oppression in Afghanistan, Iraq, and perhaps Iran, soon?) in forms of
improvisatory new imperialism and neo-colonialism (Hardt and Negri, 2000;
MacLaren and Farahmandpur, 2004). For me, as it is for you, Alan, there is
a need to understand the roots of the kind of hegemonic thinking that act
as a source of deep pain within myself. I have in mind those hegemonic
roots which led to slavery, colonialism, the imperial adventure,
apartheid, and the state violence of racism that mediates my life, and the
lives of those I love, in contemporary Britain and the West. Thank you,
Alan, for your elegant gift in using words to convey your meanings with
precision and jouissance.
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