Sara,

I am slowly and surely reading your entry, having sent proposals for  
anti-racism education to their destinations.

I agree with Freire when he stresses that language comes with action  
and I'll add values.

I truly hate racism.  It sickens me to my stomach quite literally.
This is my value and political engagement/commitment statement and  
intention.  My ontology is a person who is sickens by racism.  Doing  
something active against racism and educating against racism gives  
meaning to my ontology and defines it.  My intention is to educate  
against racism and do it well.  My action is to show the racist how  
little insecure, miserable and weak he/she is.  This is obviously also  
grounded in history.  What was accepted four decades ago is frowned on  
and illegal nowadays so my task is easier now.

In my work and practice and praxis I develop my tool to fight racism  
and discrimination.  I act.  Without acting it is all bla, bla, bla,  
as Freire puts it and idle talk or yakking as I put it.  Without  
action, which is political, value-laden, economic and history bounded,  
there is no meaning to language. It is idle and a bore. Without  
communication and verbalisation, the action is not directed and guided  
properly and not as powerful as it could be.  Of course relational  
collaboration and dialogue is most essential to the action.  This is  
verbal and ongoing.  We continue with the dialogue until we understand  
each other and our meaning.  This is dialectical and dynamic.  I  
discuss dialogue in my thesis, as much as I could in a short 90k thesis.

Now I can either use words and send you this account or send you a  
clip where I become green and vomit.  Which is more meaningful and  
less ambiguous?  I could have just eaten something bad.
Alon

Quoting Alon Serper <[log in to unmask]>:

> Just to clarify that in my thesis I criticised in details the youtube
> method to which LET was transformed from autoethnography.
>
> Re- This is what watching real human beings, being with one another, (in
> real time or on film),
>
> Real human beings cannot be reduced to films.  For a start because
> filming misses on smell (very important), taste and touch.  It merely
> covers seeing and hearing.  Hardly sufficient.  Also, there is the
> question of
> human behaviour in front of camera.  Not asking permission is unethical
> and I think illegal.  People like to be portrayed favourable in front
> of a camera and this hinders natural behaviour.
> I offered an alternative of dialectically enquiring-within-b/logging
> into the question, how do I lead a more fulfilling, meaningful and
> secure existence and relationships in, with and towards the world for
> myself?  I argue this method to be more profound and analytic in the
> phenomenological analysis and processing of ontolological experiences
> and values. I discuss this AR method in details and try to develop it
> into postdoc project that will popularise it and legitimate it further.
>
> The thesis was a very practical suggestion of a dialectical AR method
> that I think is superior to LET in the studying of human existence and
> human subject.
>
> In 2009 was told by an Internal Reader who was reading a previous and
> very different draft why I criticise LET for doing something that it
> did not intend to.  But then in the LET homepage, it is described as an
> approach to human existence.  My thesis tries to transform it into a
> superior 'AR approach to human existence'.  One that better delves
> into, identifies and processes ontological experiences of human being
> in the world.
> Alon
>
> Quoting "Salyers, Sara M" <[log in to unmask]>:
>
>> Dear Alon and All...
>>
>> Alon wrote:
>> "My main disagreement with LET is with the point that verbal    
>> language cannot express ontology that therefore requires    
>> audio-visual youtube clips.  Then,
>> the problem of course is that audio-visual clips only cover seeing   
>>  and hearing.  What about smell, taste and touch?  I think efforts   
>>  need to be made to express oneself verbally.
>> ...I keep seeing the most amazing examples of creative writing and   
>>  the most amazing creative writing tutors."
>>
>>
>> Boy, this conversation is forcing me to to reflect and clarify more  
>>   and more deeply! It is very hard work and I thank you for making   
>> me  do it!  I think, as one who is profoundly in love with the   
>> beauty  and power of language, I can empathize with what you say.    
>> Actually,  in terms of precise definition, I agree with you - but   
>> in terms of  what you *mean* by what you say, I take a different   
>> view.  If  Ontology is "A science or study of being: specifically,   
>> a branch of  metaphysics relating to the nature and relations of   
>> being; a  particular system according to which problems of the   
>> nature of being  are investigated; first philosophy", then,   
>> ontology is absolutely  expressed in words. In fact, there is no   
>> such thing as inquiry  *without* language.
>>
>> If, however, we are appropriating the word ontology to mean, not   
>> the  inquiry into 'being-ness' but being-ness itself, then the case  
>>  is  somewhat different. (You notice that I do not use the word    
>> existence. This is because 'existence' does not convey the   
>> qualities  of presence and awareness, for example, that we assign   
>> to  ontological inquiry. Which is why, of course, ontology is so   
>> often  'reassigned' to describe being-ness.) Being-ness is a   
>> clumsy,  cobbled together word, and quite ugly; but substituting   
>> the word  'ontology' is a misappropriation of existing language to   
>> meet a new  purpose, something that makes the process of   
>> distinction,  articulation and reflection extremely difficult. We   
>> do need a new  word but until we have one, I shall use being-ness.   
>>  As we know,  words describe experience and assign meaning to that   
>> experience;  i.e. they are descriptive and interpretive. Words   
>> 'name' and thereby  describe experience, (never entirely   
>> adequately), but they cannot  *be* the experience. Being, just like  
>>  sunshine, roses or starlight  has no meaning that we do not assign  
>>  through language; (we see, we  feel, we name and we interpret).   
>> Being and naming are two different  things. We do these two things,  
>>  describe experience and assign  meaning, congruently, fluently and  
>>  seamlessly, which is why we  confuse the two more often than not;   
>> that is, we mistake assigned  meaning, or interpretation, for   
>> experience to such a degree that it  is almost part of the human   
>> condition. Here's an illustration:
>>
>> Suppose you are stopped in traffic when look to your right and see   
>>  the driver of the car next to you - staring at you with a look of   
>>  absolute venom. You say to your friend who is driving, 'That man  
>> in   the car beside us looked at me with pure hatred'. What  
>> happened,   though you did not know it, was that you looked at a  
>> man in the car   beside you at the same moment when he turned his  
>> head toward you.  He  seemed to be staring - but he did not really  
>> see you at all  because  he was thinking about how to tell his wife  
>> that he had  just been  fired. You *could* have described the  
>> experience by  saying, 'That  man just looked in my direction with  
>> a terrible  expression on his  face.' But you instantly, and  
>> unconsciously,  'named' and assigned a  meaning to his expression,  
>> one that was  personal and hostile. It was  to that meaning that  
>> you reacted.  (Notice that the meaning you  assign to the  
>> experience exists in  and arises only out of the  language you use  
>> for your  interpretation.) You did not notice the  process by which  
>> you have  now come to own and internalize an  experience of being  
>> stared at  with hatred by a frightening stranger.  Your brain will  
>> react to  the meaning as to an actual experience and  will produce  
>> the  appropriate chemicals, so that you will feel shaken  and  
>> perhaps  upset for some time afterwards, thus confirming a 'real'    
>> encounter. But what happened actually occurred, not in experience,   
>>  but only in the naming of what you saw and the meaning you derived  
>>   from that naming.
>>
>> Thus what happens when we (daily), mistake meaning for experience,   
>>  is that our interpretations create our descriptions of the world    
>> which, in turn, generate new ideas which create further   
>> description…  or to put that more simply, our 'stories' become   
>> self-referenced,  grounded in and sustained by their own internal   
>> consistency rather  than by living experience. Since human beings   
>> live in stories, this  substitution of interpretation for   
>> experience can, and sometimes  does, have deadly results. Please   
>> forgive me, I mean no disrespect  or criticism by it, if I take   
>> another example from one of your posts  where you describe the   
>> psychological anatomy of a racist. (This one  doesn't have any   
>> 'deadly' results but I think it shows the  possibility of a common   
>> progression.) Your postulation of the racist  character is entirely  
>>  consistent with your description of racism;  this in turn is   
>> supported by a good deal of evidence from other  sources. (Not all   
>> the evidence, however, and not all sources.) In  other words, your   
>> analysis is entirely self-consistent - but it also  puts meaning in  
>>  place of experience and then self-references. A  racist is not an   
>> idea but a person. You have described 'the racist'  and then   
>> presented that story as if it were an existential reality,  i.e. in  
>>  place of a human being who thinks feels and acts in ways  that we   
>> would interpret as racist. You have analyzed that story and  drawn   
>> sound, compelling conclusions from the evidence contained  therein.  
>>  But as this is self-referenced, it's fundamentally flawed.  Here  
>> is  an amazing thing about it, for me. *I* found your story both    
>> satisfying compelling. It put the racist firmly in the camp of the   
>>  'other', flawed by design, less healthy than 'us', and definitely   
>>  less human. And I have to say that at visceral level I really  
>> liked   that! But then, that is precisely what racism does -  
>> dehumanizes  the  'other' while vindicating 'us'. So now I can see  
>> that the  story  cannot be true because enjoyment of 'othering' -  
>> even those  who  offend my own humanity because they 'other' and  
>> then oppress  on the  basis of class, race, sex, belief etc. -  
>> demonstrates that  the  operant factor is as present in me as it is  
>> in 'racists' and,  in  fact you and everyone else!
>>
>> What has that to do with what can and cannot live in words, with AR  
>>   and Living Theory? Just this. The only way to avoid the kind of    
>> inauthenticity that lives in the substitution of meaning for    
>> experience, is to understand, absolutely clearly, that words are    
>> *not* and never can be the experiences they describe; that you must  
>>   live, and live in, the experience that you describe; that you  
>> must   return to the experience again and again to test your own    
>> description. Thus, my own experience of enjoying the 'portrait of a  
>>   racist' and then reflecting on that enjoyment was all that pulled  
>>   *me* up short; there were no flaws in the internal consistency of  
>>   your story and analysis. This is why we have to ring-fence    
>> unfiltered experience in ways that constantly bring us back to it,   
>>  that remind us that description is not the 'thing-in-itself', so    
>> that we can stop describing and self referencing our own stories   
>> and  begin to give the being-ness that precedes description and   
>> meaning  its true place.
>>
>> This is what watching real human beings, being with one another,   
>> (in  real time or on film), does for us. We can allow ourselves to   
>> see  and feel, just the way we might turn our faces up to the sun   
>> or the  rain. Then we can look at one another with love or wonder   
>> and say,  'What *was* that?' And begin to talk. And we will know   
>> that the love  and wonder that we write and talk about are   
>> what-they-are, and are  beyond our words. And we will also know   
>> that it is wonderful to  reflect, to talk and to write about them   
>> so that we can share and  grow from the experience. We will also   
>> know that the words and the  experience are not the same thing. The  
>>  being-ness lives in the  experience; the reflection (an image of   
>> the real thing only), lives  in the words. This is one of the   
>> things that makes subjective, LT,  and our sharing of the   
>> experience in its being-ness (on film if  that's all we have   
>> available) so powerful.
>>
>> love
>> Sara
>>
>>