Dear Pete and All,

Thank you!

I think I may have shared the attached piece with the group before, but it
seems to me to be so resonantly attuned(!) with what you have written below,
that I feel it may be apt to share again. It can be found at
http://people.bath.ac.uk/bssadmr.


In short, what I feel that video clip reveals is no less than the BENEFIT
and UNDERSTANDING that can result from 'the natural re-inclusion of the
dislocated self', whereby we come to appreciate our selves as dynamic
inclusions - distinct but not discrete - of co-creative flow. We regain the
sense of belonging with and within (not TO) one another in a common wealth
pool of creative spirit in which our mutual contributions and needs are
acknowledged, appreciated and supported. Our sense of unique personal
identity grows - not weakens - with our awareness of inclusion (perhaps not
so much 'subsumption'), of and by our natural dynamic neighbourhood. Our
protective, defensive individual self-definitions BEGIN to melt (i.e. not
into absolute formlessness) from icy exclusion into warm togetherness. We
begin to know the real meaning of human joy and well-being in diverse
community - at least on a good day!

That is what I think can be the real EDUCATIONAL value of the video clip, as
a means of illustrating how our quality of life can be enhanced and
transformed by a receptive-responsive form of mutual understanding and
involved enquiry that transcends (whilst incorporating) objective
rationality. Of course, people observing the clip will not be able to FEEL
what was felt by those present on that occasion. But most will have
experienced something similar and hence be able to relate to what lies
behind the outwardly observable scene. Something that could even dissolve
the cancerous concrete coldness of Euclidean Bath University architecture on
a dark December night. A sense of continuous natural inclusion in
co-creative togetherness, which is overruled (sic) the moment we regard
ourselves as sovereign objects and put a singular 'full stop' to the flow by
declaring 'independence' in our 'own right' (write). [this is why,
incidentally, I'd just rather put 'experient' in place of 'expert' in what
you have written below].


Love

Alan

----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Mellett <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 04 June 2007 16:54
Subject: 18 December 2002


Jack -

“What would you like to do to celebrate your 61st birthday?” you asked
early last month. “Have a chat with you about standards of judgment, record
the conversations and post a distillate on the BERA website” I said (even
though lunch at the George was on offer) -  so here it is, pared down as a
narrative summary constructed almost entirely from the words we used.

OK Jack - as I understand it, the context of this BERA e-seminar is to
reveal standards of judgment that are appropriate to evaluating the quality
of the knowledge we are generating as practitioner-researchers - standards
of judgment being the appropriate standards we use to evaluate our claim to
having knowledge; plus the need for us to understand the logic which is the
mode of thought appropriate for comprehending the real as rational, as
understood within the perspective we are working in.

We were speaking all the time with reference to the video-clip at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxqRF2tVLB4 which shows me explaining my use
in December 2002 of the music of Stephane Grapelli and Django Reinhardt in
their ‘Minor Swing’ -  and their expression of affirmation in their own
achievement at the end of the piece -  to evoke my feelings of affirmation
for Jackie Delong’s achievement in gaining her doctorate. The feeling of
sharing the pleasure in this celebration of Jackie’s achievement may be
experienced at the moment of the laughter when I explain to the group that
they should listen attentively for what follows the last note -  and
Margarida asks how she will know it is the last note if she hasn’t heard
the piece before! I heard this question and the immediate laughter not as a
challenge to my rhetorical flow; my intuitive response had a quality
(through Alan Rayner’s ‘receptive responsiveness’) which opened the
opportunity for the group as a whole to affirm its conviviality through its
subsequent laughter. The ‘eruption’ of humour towards the end of the clip
shows the flow of life-affirming energy through the boundaries of the
relationships into a community celebration that is focused on Jackie
Delong’s achievement. The purpose of this clip (which you used and
commented on at
http://www.jackwhitehead.com/jack/mfjwDIVERSEcomplete.pdf) is to emphasise
the importance of expressing pleasure, through laughter, in both our webs
of betweenness and pedagogies of the unique in our communities of practice.

There is a concurrent need for receptive responsiveness if dialogue is to
truly be educational - and for something to be educational it has to
improve the quality of our lives. The clip represents a relationally-
dynamic process: you are bringing your four years as supervisor as a facet
of your productive life; Jackie her thesis as a body of knowledge from
practitioner research; music as metaphor for that achievement; all informed
by values that were energised and affirmed by those present and encouraged
by my understanding of dialogical relationship and the living nature of my
own embodied knowledge that I brought to the occasion.

And what did I bring to that group? Why/how did I behave as you see me in
that clip? I reckon that, by the age of 56 as I then was, I ought to have
become an expert in some aspect of the business of living and thus be able
to integrate the holistic and the intuitive (Dreyfus and Dreyfus). All of
us should aspire to be able to grasp our lives entire in moving seamlessly
between the layers of life present in such a group - to be able to respond
at a variety of levels all at once - words, grammar, aesthetic, music -
and if we are to enter into that dynamic equilibrium with each other and
with that sense of resonance, we are enabled to lift each other up to that
level where all these different aspects of human discourse and all these
channels are open and flowing at the same time because we are experts at
the business of being alive. Such a gathering is itself a work of art, in
that it is able to lift up - educate -  at both emotional and intellectual
levels. You and I agree about what we experienced as being educational that
evening - through applying similar standards of judgment? What are the
appropriate standards of judgment that are required to enable someone who
was not there, who is viewing the clip and reading this text, to draw the
same conclusion - to gain a vicarious view as if they had been present?

Perhaps two related but distinguishable standards of judgment are at work
here: lexical definition and the ostensive expression of meaning which is
emerging in relation to the enquiry process, which is something we are
expressing together. There are (1) sentences, statements and propositions
and (2) Lived expression of meaning which is flowing through me as I
respond to others -  but there is also (3) - something which is being
evoked by my creativity from the creative responses of others present into
a shared form of expression within which the sense of self becomes subsumed
in the flow of energy generated by the group’s response. And by ‘subsumed’
I mean that you and I have a congruent view of what we experienced in 2002
and of its educational value - in the same sense that singing in a choir
gives a resonance that makes me feel that I am singing with the voices of
all those around me. Agreeing to a standard of judgment means that we sing
with the other’s voice and know the meaning. Dialogical responsiveness
requires us to listen as we speak but not to speak when we are listening -
involving equilibrium and resonance, as we strive with good intent to feed
our individual readings back to the group. The closest I can get to an
expression of standards of judgment at work in this respect is when I am
able to say “I now know that you understand what I mean” - and when we are
all in a group ad saying this to each other.

Now - and this is the nub of the present enquiry - what is educational
about the clip and about this discourse we have started to carry out over 4
years later? We agree that meanings are emergent, coming out of the very
process of dialogue (rather than in terms of cyclical grammatical
definitions) and from the forms of receptive responsiveness needed for
dialogue to actually be educational - those are the standards of judgment
to be brought to the BERA symposium. In the clip, you will see me looking
and connecting around the group as I speak - I am speaking with
attentiveness, connecting music as metaphor with the lives of those
present. I like to think that I am moved by a desire for an expression of
authenticity of being, rather than striving to create an appearance.

But what contribution to improving the quality of our lives can the clip
and this annotation to it make? Perhaps the potential educational influence
of the other depends on the quality of the relationship as we recognise the
living and emergent nature of the standard of judgment - not as something
pre-defined and external to us. We were all there within our own dialogue
with the occasion. To what extent was it a shared dialogue? And to what
extent can others read this narrative and view the clip and apply the same
standards of judgment and so create their own congruent dialogue within the
meanings of their own lives? Those forms of life joined together and shown
in the clip - could it be that the emerging aesthetic - the thing that
connects us - that something done with good intent that strives to be
authentic - carries its own standards of judgment? Is it that they are
developed and made manifest as the spoken dialogue linearly unfolds and the
unspoken dialogue holistically develops between those present? Or, as in
(3) above - something which is being evoked by my creativity from the
creative responses of others present into a shared form of expression
within which the sense of self becomes subsumed in the flow of energy
generated by the group’s response.

Now Jack - perhaps we could open up a conversation from which new
understandings might emerge, the first step being for you to let me know
how far the above ‘pick and mix’ narrative reflects the areas of interest
we touched on and the connections we made - and to what extent it is
educational.

- Pete