 |
 |
Good Morning All, Mutse Atsi, Karibuni, and Ubuntu ngumuntu nagabantu- The latter term of Ubuntu is more accurately translated from Nguni language systems as 'I am a person only through other persons' - and it is this translation, with the emphasis placed on 'i' connected to 'we' that I make distinct and discrete my usage of this term from the 'I am because of you' Anglo-Saxon 'colonial' appropriation. A Note on Terms and their use: 'Mutse Atsi' is the now dead linguistic form my ancestors used to say, 'I See You'. It was the prelude to relationship and required a reciprocal, Mutse Atsi, indicating 'I See You', too. I think this probably represented a kind of indigenous live theory of inclusion. While the Khoikhoin sociocultural space of my ancestors had differences from Nguni sociocultural practices, the practice of I See You' as held in the Nguni word, 'Sawubona' is inclusive of southern African cultures. 'Karibuni' (plural form of Karibu, drawn from Arabic)is a wonderful word, meaning 'Welcome All' in Kiswahili, the language of Asma Hamud, my wife. I have found this to be a vibrantly inclusive and 'live greeting' in Arab Swahili society since first encountering it thirty six years ago, in England. I like the idea of my emergent 'karibu pedagogy' as an alternative theory of teaching in my alterity as Diaspora. Putting the 'P' back in to Action Research and LET accounts: Why am I making this posting this morning? I have been energised by Brian's off-line email to me, the reply to which I posted on-line because it asked me about spirituality in AR. I don't see any spirituality in my AR practice as such: I see spirituality in my Progressive Islam, though. My educative and research project in AR is now focusing on putting the 'P' into AR having spent some years of my research journey taking the 'p' out of AR, and some of its 'Panamanian researchers' who fly under an AR flag of convenience. I have two very specific meanings of 'P' in mind mind. My first meaning is the 'P' of politics as an expression of global capitalism and the new imperialism (MacLaren and Farahmandpur, 2004) because this focus seems to be excluded from many AR accounts, and particularly Living Educational Theory accounts up to 2004. Within this I would include state violence as racism (after Joy James), and see the Stephen Lawrence and Victoria Climbie tragedies as a failure of a whiteness-centred society (after Jayne Ifekwunigwe, Britain, to protect its black citizens. The meaning of my second 'P' is drawn from the latest book of Pushkala Prasad (July, 2005), Crafting Qualitative Research, in which she suggests, and I agree with her, that there is now a 'tradition' of the three 'P's - postmodernism, poststructuralism, and 'Postcolonialism' - established in mainstream qualitative research. But this is not paralleled in Action Research. For example, in LET accounts up to 2004 there is some evidence of the presence of the first two 'P's, but absolutely no evidence of the third 'P'. This point should be set against my PhD registration in the department of education at Bath University in 1997. As an Action Researcher my question is not biased towards AR as spiritual practice. Instead, my bias and interest is in influencing AR practitioners and scholars to consider integrating what they seem to have forgotten from their accounts. In the emphasis on the priapic 'I' of self, some Action Research, and especially Living Educational Theory (LET)accounts up to 2004, seem to have forgotten the importance of contextualist, third person propositional analyses and third person action-related narrative accounts. I empathize with Marshall and Reason in their approach to forging links between first, second and third person action research accounts, as reflected in the CD-ROM that explores and demonstrates effectively and engagingly the influence of their integrative AR practices. My interest in educative practice is to remind AR to take into account the Psycho-social perspectives of groups, society and racism as the centre for Psycho-Social Studies is doing at the University of the West of England; to remember the sociocultural context that is pervasive and mediates first and second person AR accounts; to resituate analyses of third person accounts of hegemony in the analysis of state violence, say, for the nature of second person relationship the Action Researcher finds herself in. In integrating these third person sociocultural analyses in to LET accounts I believe a more realistic exploration of the Agency/Structure debate can take place. How free are we as LET accountants when we suggest this is my living pedagogy? How is this crimped and mediated by structural and material social arrangements that have history, that have a space beyond the influence and direct control of the individual LET accountant. Integration seems to be directly related to critical interrogation. In this way, I imagine that the third person significance of much first and second person action research work could be made more widely accessible, invitational, and inclusional. I could, of course, be mistaken in this insight. Taking the priapic 'I' out of Eurocentric and Western Action Research: A note on convention: in my writing I am shifting from the use of the priapic 'I' to 'i'. The priapic 'I' reminds me of the colonial, European white 'I' of certain suzerainty. While the firm but small 'i' in my writing is reflective of how in my practice i am being influenced by the 'we~i' of Eastern (Arab Islamic) and Southern (African and Maori) sociocultural norms for social life, rather than the atomised, private ways of living favoured in the West. 'i' stands as a marker in my writing for my postcolonialism, my Diaspora, my hybridity, my 'mixed-race'. 'i' is a live eschewing of that priapic 'I' of neo-colonial Europe and the bizarre western attachment (as it seems to me when looking through my lens)to the privacy of 'my space'. 'i' is also a marker for a non-western form of Acton Research that eschews some of the Euroecentric assumptions of much contemporary AR, and Living Educational Theory (LET). The European white priapic 'I' does not migrate terribly well into Eastern and Southern sociocultural contexts. My use of 'i' is ironic, too: i use it in my consultancy, in my role as College diversity specialist, in my pedagogic practices and relationships as well, and, at last, as a final act of defiance, in writing up my thesis. The irony i'd like to share with you - though this may not travel as heavily as a joke from another culture and linguistic system - is those same Western people who clamour for their much vaunted 'privatised I' of self, whose shrieking shibboleth 'Don't invade my space!'is so cacophonic to southern and eastern ears seem unable to see the irony in asserting their right to space for their priapic 'I' as an expression of their individuality, their selfhood, their being is the same priapic 'i' that was the relentless medium for a European colonial and imperial hubris. So from here in this posting, 'i' will be used. be gone, priapic 'I'! The priapic 'I' is a marker for Eurocentricty, for vestigial colonialism, for a space before the 'post' in postcolonial. What do I mean by Action Research as a Practice of Live Theorising - Postcolonial Critical Pedagogy? Here's my first take. i believe 'Live Theorising'(Murray, 2005)comes from my motivation, passion and energy for a certain 'ethics and politics of postcolonialism' to be expressed in Action Research accounts in ways which LET accounts up to 2004 have not been able to 'manage'. Of course, i accept the human parameter that one can only give what one has to give. i am using 'scares' indicate that this form of theorising is 'live' and mutable, and is still emergent in my exploration and explanation. i am conveying my meanings from the grounds of my emergent understanding) By a certain 'ethics and politics of postcolonialism (Nyathi and Murray, email exchange, 2004)I have in mind a quality and focus of ethics and politics that is missing from Living Educational Theory, though it seems to be available to some Participatory Action Research (PAR) work. Therefore, from my perspective as the imaginative and creative force behind an idea of 'Live Theorising' that i wouldn't wish to see appropriated in the way terms like Ubuntu have been, 'live theorising' provides the motivating energy, values, insights, and theorising connections that moves forward the development of 'Live Theorising' accounts that better reflect the politics, the postcolonial and the hegemony of state violence of racism than do LET accounts up to 2004. 'Live Theorising' is not a subaltern of Living Educational theory, a 'worker ant' or colonial body' to energise through the creative sweat and life force of the colonised, and enslaved, the interests of Living Educational Theory. LET is steeped in whiteness as Jack and I agree, and I believe that LET accounts are tinged by a vestigial colonial expression, whereas this is not who i am, and because i am other (Other) live theorising seems a more appropriate variegation of LET for my purposes? While 'Live Theorising' is most definitely from the 'same rootstock' as LET it is guided by a different 'ethics and politics of postcolonialism' represented less as a formal theory as yet (the term 'theorising' gives a better impression of the emergence of my thinking and practice at this stage) and is much more likely to deliver emancipatory and liberatory energies and outcomes aimed at decentering/dismantling whiteness, which is so historically pervasive in LET accounts. This is how i'm making sense of the emergence of 'Live Theorising': first, as a 'struggle' to pick my way through Jack's whiteness as my supervisor; then as an encounter of bitter and spiteful 'struggle' with the whiteness of the Bath Monday group in the period 1998-2002 (here i failed abjectly to influence any change; and thirdly, in my 'struggle' to bring the epistemologies of critical race theory, critical whiteness and postcolonial theorising to the LET Bath space. This is how i'm positioning 'Live Theorising in writing up my thesis. In four key areas i am experiencing some measured and modest successes: Firstly in the project with Jack Whitehead to visibly explore our white and mixed-race identity's as educators, and the influence this has had on the formation of Jack's 'postcolonial values' as a contribution to the evolution of postcolonial social formations - go to Jack's writing's section on www.actionresearch.net Secondly, in the supervision of dissertations in my College that have included Postcolonial theorising (Nceku Nyathi, 2000), 'Live Theorising'(James Staples and Debbie Smith, 2005), and Living Educational Theory approaches - go to my webpage and click on 'Action Research Theses' - http://www.royagcol.ac.uk/~paul_murray/ Thirdly, in my appointment in my College as Diversity officer responsible for Race, Ethnicity, Religion and Beliefs. This latter is what counts for me as evidence of my educative practice as a form of resistance, as a force of positive energy for development and transformation as i am now able to extend the influence of my Ubuntu inclusion and postcolonial theorising within those parts of my college where decisions are made about structure and culture. This is a form of non-western Organization Development activism. Finally, I am now an AUT activist, I subscribe to the e-list, and I am training as a race officer within the AUT. In this I am making a very clear connection between my first and second person educational narrative as Action Research, and my third person organizational and societal responsibilities for activism. I see this as an extension of my third- person organizational development work through diversity. Jack sees the importance of 'Live Theorising' in this way, "This is also how I'm seeing the development of living educational theories > in a process of live theorising, as they begin to include an explicit > understanding of a postcolonial critical pedagogy at work in the > educational influence in one's own learning, in the learning of others and in the evolution of social formations" (email exchange , 15th June 2005) While i'm delighted with Jack's insight, i go along with it as far as LET does not seek to 'colonise' or 'appropriate' the creative, independent, different (differential) energies of 'Live Theorising, as if Live Theorising is a subset of LET in some way, or a necessary 'energy' to sustain LET. Live Theorising must have its very own independent Postcolonial status to be viable, legitimate, and above all else credible. Of course 'Live Theorising' and Living Educational theory are closely 'related', complementary even, and derived from the same rootstock, and both approaches share similar standards of judgement concerning evidence of the influence of one's practice and so on. But 'live theorising' is also different and distinctive, distinguishable from LET without being at all discrete. 'Living Theorising' (Murray, 20050 is a non-racist form of LET. That is a key developmental difference. By non-racist I mean that 'live theorising' is whiteness aware, alive to the pernicious and pervasive valence of whiteness in ways that LET accounts up to 2004 have not shown themselves to be. 'Live Theorising' emerged from my outrage, anger, and gradual emancipation from my subalternity within the Bath Monday group's whiteness during the period 1998-2002 as i performatively transformed my mixed-race, white~brown identity. As my consciousness awoke to the whiteness of the space enclosing me I more than ever became able to articulate my sense of the destructively and excludingly powerful valence of whiteness in LET accounts (and the accountants, let's not reify the 'accounts' as if they do not have people who are white and whiteness that gives them their 'unique living quality') up to 2004. Powered by my creative and passionate postcolonial and emancipatory energy, through my expression of a certain 'ethics and politics of postcolonialism' as a mixed-race person, and within a focusing exchange in dialogic relationship with Jack, I have been able to realize 'Live Theorising' as a powerful aspect of my performative identity as a mixed- race educator embroiled and crimped by whiteness, liberal or ugly. 'Live Theorising' is my name for the kind of political, postcolonial, anti-racist, whiteness dismantling and decentering account of my educative practice that is more appropriate for my educative project than is LET. 'Live Theorising' is a colour-full space, in which people who are colour-sighted rather than 'colour blind' have begun to move towards a multiracial form of theorising, which LET hasn't yet adjusted for. I can now imagine my response when asked by an external...'What kind of theorising is 'Live Theorising'? - 'Live Theorising' is the kind of theorising that LET isn't. Living Educational Theory has the powerful valence of whiteness 'living' within it. My own live research enquiry and identity was undermined by a form of 'living exclusion', a pervasive 'living whiteness', despite people's espoused values to the contrary. Out of this 'struggle in adversity' within what I perceived and experienced as a colonial space The Bath Monday group 1998-2002), 'Live Theorising' has emerged as an explicitly multiracial form of theorising, 'alive' to the importance of linking 'vital' first and second person narrative accounts to third person contextualist, propositional analyses and accounts, through which an awareness of 'whiteness as hegemonic' can be addressed in ways it cannot be addressed in LET accounts because of their predilection for first and second person hermeneutic and dialogic validities. In empathy, while 'Live Theorising' echoes the significance of hermeneutic and dialogic validities (Saukko, 2003), it also seeks to include in any viable live theorising account what Saukko refers to as deconstructive and contextualist validities, too. In my live theorising account I refer Saukko's creative ideas from methodological approaches to Cultural Studies, and integrate within her ideas my own originality of mind and critical judgement as i meld my nomadic methodological creativity as a border-crossing, transgressive practice. In this way i include 'Mutse Atse' validity (I See You, an inclusional form of validity), 'Indaba validity' from southern Africa, with its sociocultural emphasis on dialogue between parties towards understanding and agreement, and 'Convivencia validity', a form of validity grounded in the practice of the Caliphate of Granada in including Jewish and Christian scholars within the safety, and protective embrace of a sovereign Islamic state in Medieval Europe. This is how I bring my spirituality of Progressive Islam into my day to day live practice of a postcolonial critical pedagogy, that includes love, care, responsibility, and my willingness to abandon the Islamic precept of 'conversion' for 'convivencia' with my supervised students. I think it is my realization of this dimension of my practice that has enabled me to supervise Polis Pantiledes Action Masters in which he explored the tensions in managing resources and his spiritual management as an ordained Salvation Army minister. Otherwise why would a devout Christian choose to pursue such a journey with me? I have invited several students to post their critical appreciation of my claim to this list. Let's see, inshallah. I believe at this most fragile and delicate time in human encounter that my practice of convivencia held within the scarifying potential of my postcolonial critical pedagogy indicates how my first person practice can hold out hope for 'our third person future spaces', together, and not in a head on clash of civilizations. It is an Islamic history of inclusive spaces that makes such a divine mockery of the neoconservative flirtation with Huntington's 'clash of civilisations' thesis. 'Live Theorising' emerges from the foment and moment of such insights. While Living Educational Theory as a perspective, as an approach to Action Research, as a way of creating knowledge of our racist society and state violence seems to have miss this point over the past twenty years, sadly. However, i do agree with Jack when he claims in an email today that there is evidence of a change in this matter on the immediate horizon. And of what i know of his supervisions of Marian Naidoo, Eden Charles, Cathy Aymer, Ian Phillips and me, the evidence is amassing on the border! I think this wave of supervisions will finally tip the scales against the accumulation of exclusive (and in my experience, excluding of me)LET accounts that make no mention of the state violence of racism, of whiteness and Postcolonialism. Perhaps it is as Nceku Nyathi my doctoral colleague in Postcolonial Organizational Theory at Leicester University Management School (an ex- supervised undergrad student, "Why is Management Theory White and Eurocentric? - Toward an Afro-Centric management Theory") suggests to me, "What if this is the meaning of the so called 'Postcolonial condition', Paulus? This struggle that we have as Diaspora, and Postcolonial people,to conduct our own research while also teaching into the 'heart of whiteness' that is the Academy, your bit at Bath, and my bit at Leicester. To eke out the space to work in creatively, and in a spirit of freedom, we have to first winkle out the racists, the 'colour blind' liberal white do-gooders, and all those folks...so we can find white and black colleagues who have a Critical Theory awareness, and are prepared to use it, to speak it, to write it in order to support our claims to space. Notice how these people show their postcolonial credential's by citing all the conferences and workshops they've done in African countries and India and Latin American countries....while neglecting to mention how they've actually turned their backs on wrestling with the postcolonial condition' as it presents itself in a whiteness-centred society such as Britain. Such hypocrisy driven by RAE criteria and imperatives. We are living our theses now, and when we talk about Postcolonialism we are living it day to day in our universities as our working and research spaces. This is what we do, this is who we are, and we are shaped by this, and contribute to it, and we can try to change this scenario, too. But above all else we must write about; how i'm treated here at Leicester, how you are treated at the Royal and Bath, this IS out research, this is our postcolonial activism: just letting them know it. This is where our decolonization continues.....'(Notes of phone chat with Nceku Nyathi, May 2005, UK) Having tried to craft a doctoral thesis in the shadow of the LET space in Bath University and encountered the space Nceku describes, i have acknowledged that i found myself both failing and flailing. However, in the early months of 2005, i began to radically express my originality of mind, and critical judgement from an understanding of the ground of my 'ontological security' to develop an altogether more amenable and 'karibu' form of live theorising that would have no room for whiteness within it, or more realistically would recognise the pervasiveness of whiteness in all holomovements (Bohm). In this recognition, of my need for a 'Live Theorising', i can see now how i have been realizing my personhood in a postcolonial way. Live Theorising is a form of 'postcolonial politics or action' in differentiating from Living Educational theory while not creating a separate space. 'Live Theorising' is a theory of alterity, a theorising of hybridity more appropriate to Diaspora but is not an alternative theory to LET. Through Live Theorising, through which the postcolonial values of Post-Race vitally flow in a visible, specific, and explicit decentering of whiteness, in ways that nearly 20 years of white LET accounts have not yet developed, i have evidence for the robustness of my ideation for live theorising in the generous acknowledgements of my supervisor, if not other LET accountants, in respect of how i've influenced his education through my mutual availability to the sharing of my nomadic epistemological journeys with him, and the subsequent shifts in his consciousness. Thus, Live Theorising includes accounts of the lives of people largely excluded from much Action Research work, and in LET accounts up to 2004: and is inclusive of those white people who want to be included as 'traitors to whiteness' and 'race traitors' as a loyalty to a multiracial, 'Post-Race' (Ali, 2002) humanity of the future. Summary: In this posting I hope you come away with a clear appreciation of my purpose to embed the two 'P's in Action Research. i hope i've clearly conveyed the productive thinking, action, reflection and existential meaning i've been able to draw out of what i experienced as the humiliating pain of racism i've encountered in the Bath Monday LET group during the period 1998-2002. i believe i've begun to show how my practice of crafting 'Live Theorising' (Murray, 2005) could be a productive and hopeful contribution to a form of Action Research that is 'political' within my first meaning of 'P', and 'Postcolonial' within Prasad's third meaning of 'Post', too. I hope Live Theorising' will be a 'darker space' for the objectification, and dismantling of whiteness as a guiding beacon of my educational project. Please note, because of my heritage as 'once were slaves/once were masters' i invert the terms 'light' and 'dark'. For me, the lightness of whiteness in colonialism was an unmitigated disaster, a holocaust, and so i associate 'lightness' with something that is not good for dark-skinned people. Please note, therefore, my southern hemisphere and non-western inversion of the terms light and dark. Above all, i hope i have shown in this account a radical shift in my demeanour, in my angry attitude, my agonised disposition and my tendency to severance and rather than using the space of this posting for taking the 'p' out of Action Research, i have shown a peaceful, accepting maturity in my educative practice as i patiently strive to put the 'P' back into Living Educational Theory. If i can make this tiny contribution to Jack Whitehead's educational project through my crafting of 'Live Theorising 'alongside' his Living Educational Theory influence in the Academy, then i will believe i'm doing something worthwhile for a wonderful friend who is a brilliant and timeless educator, and whose singularly remarkable Living Educational Theory transforms exponentially, unlike that of others, to opened its eyes, ears and heart to my plea from 'live theorising' for LET accounts to bring a 'critical gaze' to whiteness. Jack has done this. With this sense of accompaniment provided to me by Jack, i continue to draw on the ideas and practices of Paulo Freire, bell hooks, W. E. Du Bois, Peter MacLaren, and Jack Whitehead, and i continue to grow happily into my intellect as a mixed-race person. Yes, I am happy in my mixed- race! "Songa Mbele", as my dear and loving father in law, Mzee Hamud Issa Al- Kindy puts it in his beloved Kiswahili. Yaqub-Paul Murray