JISCMail - PRACTITIONER-RESEARCHER Archives

Re: What kind of lifeworld are we creating for each other here? Greetings Yaakub and everyone
Thank you for sharing so much about your life – I greatly enjoyed the photograph of your family and your reflections regarding your sense of identity and connection within this company of souls. Thank you too for paying such close attention to the discourse that has developed, and for honouring the thought, intention and articulations both of your heritage and of this present encounter.

I would like to take up the exchange around your insertion of the word “white” in my text.

First, I am most happy for any text that I write to be taken into the frames that others make of them. I see writing as a resource for reflexivity (see Judy Marshall’s work at the university of Bath, or Susan Weil’s work, at SOLAR, university of West England) more than a means of information spreading or any form of persuasion. Thus, I do not expect meaning to be “transferred” as it came about within me, and while I attempt to capture or grow from within the moments that ideas come together within me, as accurately as I can, my understanding is that how they are apprehended by others is not anything that I can or want to predict or control. Writing this way means for me, that I write to create the potential for multiple meaning, stirring the energies for powerful interpretations, and for self awareness in that act of interpretation, when values, assumptions, unacknowledged creativity and a host of other processes of “construction” come into being. I am more interested in the richness of connection in difference that such forms of communication create, the sense of community growing equitably through collective meaning making rather than shared meanings. This interest has taken my writing towards poetics, and something of an uncompromising stance with regard to accuracy – that is, using unfamiliar words when they are needed and braving the accusations of “jargon” or “academia” - making necessary explanations when I sense them to be needed.
So it is entirely wonderful to me that you make this insertion. It takes me to another place.

It seems to me that we all carry the seeds of oppression within us; men oppress each other and women, and children; women oppress men, each other and children; we all oppress the natural environment with little thought etc etc... I understand racial oppression as a systemic form, like gender, agist and environmental – and I see each person experiencing more or less forms of oppression from others, and exerting it on others. I have no quarrel with any one systemic form of oppression being someone’s narrative for their unfolding into responsibility for it, and emancipatory illuminations through it that shift their stance at least, and most desirably begin to perturb the systemic forms of oppression that is their pathway in life for the benefit of many others. I think though, that we cannot deal with any one form of oppression without taking into account networks of it, rising up into other systems from each other. It’s not as daunting as it sounds – by “dealing with” one form we are learning to see it and encounter the challenges in other forms being mindful of the essential differences.

I have learned through critical reflexivity to see the seeds of oppression within me, when for years I raged against others oppressing others or myself – the narrative of victim, outsider and innocent was blinding to me, and alienated me from people for so long (I have wasted so much of my life in this awful loop).
Being a white (you are right!) middle class woman in Australia (ex NZ) I cannot feel at one with this country for as long as we remain so completely and immorally neglectful of indigenous sovereignty matters, I know that I am exploiting stolen ground to live the comfortable life I do. I realised that I am the homeless one with a house, while indigenous people here are at home but without housing – I would be the same if I returned to NZ, and if I returned to UK, my ethnic home, I would be equally homeless and without house. I know this reasoning sounds naive, but there are really basic truths about this situation that have to be encountered. I am unwanted and un-needed, my only authentic home really being a migrant’s boat on the high seas where not national boundaries exits. But to feel this way transgresses an appreciation of the gift of life. So what to do/ who to be/ where to be?

So the next option is to find ways of working with fellow cuckoo nesters as I see us, to at least raise this sense of awareness and reach out to our indigenous communities. I found, as Pip so accurately recalled in one instance, that mostly my white family is unaware, and if aware, denying of or disinterested in such an understanding – although in recent years with the reconciliation movements rising and falling under our current conservative government, things moved a bit. Mostly I needed guidance from indigenous people, but that too was problematic – I was unwelcome mostly – my approaches were wrong and I was stereotyped by many. My sense of not having a right to be here was felt by some of these people to be rejecting a love of their country – which is fundamental to any relationship across these racial groups.

So I decided to retreat, and deal with my stuff, and see if somehow I could get a better handle on what this individual and systemic oppression is about, and if it is at all possible to gradually work my way through of it. My primary preoccupation has been epistemology – I think we need to develop an ability to understand how we know so we can see the workings of power, values, perception and ways of being in the world – not from a place of judgement but of rising self awareness in community with others. This is just one approach, mine that was wound into my narrative and heritage, a marginal note on the massif of human misery and wisdom that is us;

You say:

“In this photo I feel at home, I feel known and valued, I feel accepted for my strengths and my many limitations. In the web of relational accountability that sits among the complex relationships that are not explained by this photo I am able to feel comfortable in my skin. This is how I feel in my relationships with students I supervise. Relational integrity. I hope something of this standard of human and loving judgement permeates, and suffuses this posting with warmth.”

This feeling is what I too am just beginning to experience. It has been such a long time coming. Ways of living (working in so much isolation, computers, the imposition on our every day of regulated and market driven presumptions) act so deeply against being in the world as a white westerner, in “relational integrity”. In such isolation I am a completely different person to when I am held in appreciation; I feel the lack of my own eloquence to appreciate others – to find the kind of reach into human spirit that Pip, Moira, Je Kan and yourself have articulated. It makes me feel emotionally numb, I find my brick wall and am mute. This is my new area of exploration. Thank you for your eloquence, and also for weaving us into your embrace.

So, I think that one of the things I can do, to recognise my oppression of others is to also see my oppression of self, but to see it as a systemic fractal of what I do to others, where my privilege and sociologically nominated powers allow me. I see all forms of violence as demarcations of the limits of intelligence... Where I feel my frustrations, heated defences and muteness rising there is the place for stopping, breathing, taking responsibility for what I might choose to do “to” another rather than take in within my self.

With respect, I sense that the bringing together of dualities as you see in white people is a human potential for growth not limited to racial differentiations. Any act of oppression is, if you like, an indicator for the beauty and health that is being held down by some inability to break through that which we are fearful of or feel disabled about for some reason. I enjoyed reading Baker Miller’s exploration of a new psychology for women, where she discusses how the whole of human unfolding is held caught in oppressive relationships, waiting to be opened and learned through once those relationships themselves start to shift. Slavery, as I understand it, was not only white man’s opportunity; it has been the shameful basis of most empire building economies regardless of skin type. Colour is a rationale for dehumanising someone and making them “other” to the oppressor – as is objectivity; and gender, age, class, belief, ability – any excuse – an opportunity to avoid pain, fear of our own limitations, and the wonderful experience of acknowledging this together and finding our ways beyond them, together, so we may make so much hidden wisdom the heritage of future generations.

Is this naïve? Am I not attending to important distinctions, and exerting more harm as I do? I am open to your insights.

With warmth and respect
Susan

On 25/10/06 7:26 PM, "Paul Murray" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Assalaam Wa Alaikum and Eid Mubarak

I have enjoyed two postings that I find ‘Intentionally Inviting’ and would like to say why, and how they affect me to respond from the grounds of my ‘relational accountability’ (my loving need and desire to be relational in my life). I am a mixed race educator influenced by my Griqua Indigenous heritage. This is a picture of me with my extended family In Oman. I am front, right. This is my wife’s immediate family of brothers and sisters and their partners. I imagine you will feel the glow and warmth that |I’m feeling sharing this with you. Also you may judge me. But I don’t care. My joy of community will not be jeopardized by my phantasy about people’s normative judgements. The nature of relationship held in this photo is similar to the feelings that sustain my educational relationships. In this photo I feel at home, I feel known and valued, I feel accepted for my strengths and my many limitations. In the web of relational accountability that sits among the complex relationships that are not explained by this photo I am able to feel comfortable in my skin. This is how I feel in my relationships with students I supervise. Relational integrity. I hope something of this standard of human and loving judgement permeates, and suffuses this posting with warmth.

First though, some dedications: I am indebted to my sister Ochre Doyle, an Australian Indigenous educator (Bless you sister for following my traces in cyberspace) and her reference to Shawn Wilson’s phenomenal Doctoral thesis (2004). Shawn is a native American who explores Indigenous ways of knowing and points to the vitality of ’relational accountability’ for how it can inspire living standards of Indigenous judgement in education, and beyond, of course. My respect to Taiaike Alfred, Professor of Mohawk Studies in Canada for his book Wasase in which he explores a productive, loving, relational form of warriorhood that is as uncompromising as my critical gaze when it comes to the tensions between ‘agency’ as it is experienced as constriction by Indigenous Canadians, and the immanent ‘structures’ of state violence associated with whiteness as privilege and as hate. Alfred (2005) has encouraged me to appreciate that for all the anger in the world that one day we will have to sit down with white people and work things out. Of course, my White-with-Black supervisor, Jack Whitehead, has been an irrepressible spirit of realism in pointing out to me that I have, in truth, exceeded Alfred’s injunction in the lovingly creative ways I bring my mixed-race values to my supervision of white students’ theses. Funny how you can’t see the wood for the trees: my suspicion about ‘tree hugging’ is that it leads to a focus (fetish) on the singular tree - what Peter McLaren refers to as the danger of ‘militant particularism’ - and the wild woods and forests of structural power relations can become obscured. Losing sight of the inclusional importance in scholarship for explaining the intersections of personal agency and state power seems to be a recipe for delusion.

Now in writing this I can sense the possibility for recoil in my reader kicking in as I mention whiteness as privilege and as hate. This is typically the moment that defenses began to build up. I can’t help that. We have our stuff to get defensive about. Defenses are good. There’s stuff that makes us anxious and we legitimately need to defend against anxiety to give us the space and tike to process what is driving that anxiety in order to sort it, and process the debris. But I also like the way Yolanda Watts Johnson as an African American woman and educational researcher invites readers of her writing to bear in mind that if their sphincters don’t nip a little in the reading then she’s not doing her work as an activist educator. I like this reminder: not to abuse readers through the license it suggests, but to take a certain ethical liberty to take readers closer to the edge of their racism without apology. What I’d like us to consider is that this insight could be a helpful criterion for establishing good quality life writing in educational research. What do you feel about that?

But this posting isn’t about perpetuating distance, fear, shame, guilt or hate.

My mixed-race sensibility is developing slowly to appreciate how (if hardly ever why) liberal norms held in whiteness can often feel totalizing of my mixed-race need to express my knowing that the social construction of social reality should include narratives of victory and ruin, and hold these together. What I mean by this, and would like you to understand through my meaning, is that as an educator I work informed by the framing of a memoried narrative heritage as once were masters/once were slaves and because of this ancient, archaic and axiomatic knowledge of whiteness as duality I need to honour the truth of hate and love, resistance and passivity, healing words and fighting words (after Pat Hill-Collins, an inspirational Black feminist writer), anger and peace, prejudice and acceptance, and especially how the synthesis of these in action and through scholarship inform my life as wisdom. However, the art of Indigenous relational knowing is to develop a skill of knowing how to let go of the commitment to the archaic memory of hurt and thrive and dive into the here and now of meaningful relationship.

What I would like to point to in my posting is the influence of the educational projects and writing of Moira Laidlaw, Pip Ferguson, and Susie Goff (to the extent I know of these first hand and can ‘sense’ them) in this list as both the ‘living evidence’ of Intentional Invitation, and the evidence of the capaciousness of whiteness as loving humanity.

Critical whiteness theory engages white people in asking ‘how should white people act with other white people’ when they encounter whiteness as privilege, or whiteness as the hate of racism?

White brothers and sisters who work in these critical reflexive ways with their own white privilege inspire me, and invite me into relationship. So my second dedication of honour is to Moira, Susie and Pip. I believe their postings are indicative of their lives as reflexive white people (Susie – forgive my assumption about your designation).

Already, I imagine, you can see how Pip’s loving educational contribution has influenced and moved my education toward considering the relational possibilities and consequences of invitational writing in this email posting as a ‘gesture’ of ‘Intentional invitation’.

Yesterday was Eid ul Fitr. I wore my crisp white Dish-dasha and kofia (hand stitched hat) to college. I was very apprehensive. The session began at 9.30 and by the 10.30 break I was eagerly anticipating my first mid-morning coffee for a month! Then Jennifer spoke, ‘Yaakub, I would like to ask you a question’. Jennifer is from the national agricultural University in Beijing, completing her degree in my university college. I watched my first coffee for a month floating out the window. I knew what the question would be, ‘what is performance management’, as a management educator teacher of twenty years you get to anticipate student questions know what I mean?

I gathered up my pen and paper, alongwith my sinking heart and anticipations, and went over to Jennifer. ‘What is your question, Jennifer, how can I be useful?’ She replied, ‘Yaakub, you look so smart and amazing in your white dress: why are you wearing these clothes today, is it special or something?’

A group of six or seven Chinese students then talked with me about the Muslim (Hui) dining hall in the national university and how good the food is there! Half an hour later I awoke to a vague and seemingly disinviting memory of coffee. As I listened and spoke with these students a strange thing happened. Moira Laidlaw’s face and voice floated into my mind. Inside me, somewhere, I felt a smile spreading out like ripples in a mill pond. Respect Moira Laidlaw!

Reading Susie’s email the following phrase resonated with me profoundly and brought me out of silence and into action,

If I can add to what you said with some of my retrieved thoughts – I felt that the specter of “authority” had suddenly arrived. I wondered what powers were at work that gave such cutting authority its presence, and the value judgements that seemed to be made about the transactions that had gone before. I noted that these were male voices at work and felt that our women’s voices were silenced or leaving – and I wondered if there was something of the institutionalized teacher returning as a kind of safe bottom line, an archetype to pull things back to a controlled and predictable discourse with a pre-determined outcome. This of course made me feel that we were back at an epistemological cross roads, with the divergent, emergent voicing of relational knowing being diminished and in fact cut out of what was considered authentic knowledge by objectivist and mechanistic epistemologies at work.

I smiled relationally and felt I wanted to write this – Yes, Susie, this is a feeling, this ‘spectre of authority’ that is a shadow that stalks my life in colour. I have taken your beautiful writing and just changed one word that for me does not alter the ‘meaning’ of your stunning text but rather extends its faculty for inclusion. With this one word ‘your writing’ becomes the kind of writing I would like to associate with as ‘our writing’. Do I make some sense for you here?

If I can add to what you said with some of my retrieved thoughts – I felt that the specter of “authority” had suddenly arrived. I wondered what powers were at work that gave such cutting authority its presence, and the value judgements that seemed to be made about the transactions that had gone before. I noted that these were white male voices at work and felt that our women’s voices were silenced or leaving – and I wondered if there was something of the institutionalized teacher returning as a kind of safe bottom line, an archetype to pull things back to a controlled and predictable discourse with a pre-determined outcome. This of course made me feel that we were back at an epistemological cross roads, with the divergent, emergent voicing of relational knowing being diminished and in fact cut out of what was considered authentic knowledge by objectivist and mechanistic epistemologies at work.

I hope you can see that my one word change of your text is not normative.

It is my way of ‘reading into’ your text the ways I can relate to it more fully, more vitally, from my standards of mixed—race judgement about inclusion/exclusion in whiteness centred societies. Cutting through that stuff, what I really mean is that I need to change that one word in order to feel that your critical feminist writing is also ‘writing for me’ as a mixed-race person.

With this word change I feel I can bring my ‘i’ to your ‘i’ in the hope of a possibility of ‘we~i’.

This is my way of extending the relational significance of your insight into a living awareness of how ‘Intentional Invitation’ actually happens. When I see such wonderfully written insights about institionalised totalizing oppression I just like to add ‘white’ in order to feel that my sensibility of oppression is also included. Respect to Susie Goff!

Pip Ferguson has an unerring quality, and a great eye, for relating a person’s expression of their embodied knowledge to examples of sound academic practice, to very useful literature, and for translating a concept into how it could like as a teaching practice that makes a difference. As I read Pip’s writing I’m reminded of Ernest Boyer’s four scholarships – discovery, integration, application and teaching – and can read how Pip brings each of these into play in her posting. There’s something else about Pip’s educational work. Her acceptance of Maori as a way of knowing suffuses the radiance of her work: for me it is what I understand and appreciate as relational accountability in action. I trust Pip’s axiomatic values of humanity in ways that go beyond words and palpable evidence. Ineffable. All the words in the world claiming to be accepting would not impel me to trust such rhetoric in the way that Pip’s presence invokes my trust in her appreciation of my Indigenous Griqua way of knowing. This does not mean I’d subordinate my critical gaze as a scholar in the face of this ineffable feeling. But it does mean that any exploration (scrapping!) with Pip would more than likely be over epistemological differences and I would not need to re-examine the roots of the tree of trust by pulling it our of the ground to examine why the leaves are occasionally yellow, mildewed and dropping off.

In my life experience with whiteness this sense of being able to ‘take trust for granted’ means a lot to me in terms of emotional safety and well-being. As my scholarship of Franz Fanon revealed, the psychological life of the male of colour has its complexities……Respect Pip Ferguson.

What each of these educator-researchers achieves for me is the demonstration of the living evidence of a relational way of being as people who are white (making a big assumption again Susie, forgive me if I’m mistaken in my zeal to draw out the parable here!).

Their way of being encourages me to see in the growth of my educational knowledge as a mixed-race person who has been often hurt by whiteness as privilege and hate, the stunning capacity within whiteness for the expression of loving humanity. Only white people with a ‘certain ethics and politics’ (Nyathi and Murray, 2005) of postcolonial appreciation can do this. What I see in Moira, Susie, and Pip’s postings is the way this ethical and political quality bursts into life. This is whiteness as lovely humanity, and not whiteness as hate. As I’ve always claimed in my e-writing: whiteness is as whiteness does.

For too long I believe, the focus in critical whiteness theory has been on the disavowal, the eschewing and ‘traitoring’ of whiteness.

While I love the immensely brave book by Rob Jensen - The Heart of Whiteness, 2005 - that inspired Katie Simon, an agricultural science student to write last year an undergraduate dissertation with my supervision entitled, ‘What’s a Nice White Girl Like Me Doing in My Learning With a Dangerous Mixed-Race Educator Like You?’ the truth is that Katie’s title ironically suggests the possibility of whiteness in her title.

I hope in this posting I have demonstrated - or at least point to – how I’m responding to Alon’s injunction to write about what we do, what moves us, and put that into the public domain and wait for the response. I’m having a try.

What I reckon I’ve shown in this writing is how my embodied values have transformed over time through my practice of my emergent human wisdom in ways that that now enable me to hold a ‘good’ living theory of whiteness that contains contradiction – the contradiction that the dynamics of whiteness hold the possibility for loving potential and hateful oppression. The choice for each one of us is whether we want to use whiteness as an ethical springboard for ‘Intentional Invitation’ rather than remaining unreflexive about whiteness, held within a psychic prison of whiteness as privilege and as hate. Although my experience of whiteness as hate has fuelled the essential rage in my life to find out what it is I know about the ways in which whiteness has contributed through ‘negative energies’ to the growth of my educational knowledge, now I have a better understanding of this I want to stroll the narrative ruins of those negative energies to produce Intentionally Invitational forms of education that remain critical of racial oppression but do so from the hopeful grounds of whiteness as the poetical politics of equality in respect (Modood, 2006). I know Jack will delight in taking this stroll with me, at last.

If you take a look at the photo I’ve attached, and dwell in the feelings that come to you as you do, then you will come to know through your senses how the loving community of extended family as Ubuntu works, magically, to suffuse my critical and caring standards of judgement as an educator that I hope I’ve succeeded in breathing into my posting here.

Respect

Yaakub Murray

From: BERA Practitioner-Researcher [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Susan Goff
Sent: 24 October 2006 00:20
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: What kind of lifeworld are we creating for each other here?

Greetings Jack and everyone
Thank you very much for inviting my continued engagement and thoughts at this interesting moment.
I was so heartened by Je Kan’s reflections. You captured my thoughts exactly, but because I am new to this network I did not want to disturb any agreed ways of doing that perhaps were fundamental to the collective interests. I wrote quite a long and strong email then deleted it, because the silence that follows such interventions is often so distressing, and I am also not known to anyone, so the relational nuances of my presence can be constructed in ways that are so beyond my understanding as to cause terrible harm all round. I felt like I was walking out on my activist responsibilities as a participatory practitioner, to care for the integrity and cohesion of the relationships and knowledge constructions of those with whom I communicate, and having just delivered my draft thesis to my panel I wondered if I needed to “fight” if there was going to be one, when I needed a rest, and particularly as much of my thesis is about not fighting any more while maintaining the rights and responsibilities of activism amongst my peers. So I apologise for whimping out, and thank you Jack, from my heart, for so sensitively responding and inviting back in, when in so many past experiences the response has been simply more silence and a kind of dehumanized retreat back into the anonymity of virtual voids.
When Je Kan’s email came flying in, it felt as if it was alive, cracking, with all the fire I felt – so ay I also thank you from my heart Je Kan for speaking so clearly and uncompromisingly.
If I can add to what you said with some of my retrieved thoughts – I felt that the specter of “authority” had suddenly arrived. I wondered what powers were at work that gave such cutting authority its presence, and the value judgements that seemed to be made about the transactions that had gone before. I noted that these were male voices at work and felt that our women’s voices were silenced or leaving – and I wondered if there was something of the institutionalized teacher returning as a kind of safe bottom line, an archetype to pull things back to a controlled and predictable discourse with a pre-determined outcome. This of course made me feel that we were back at an epistemological cross roads, with the divergent, emergent voicing of relational knowing being diminished and in fact cut out of what was considered authentic knowledge by objectivist and mechanistic epistemologies at work.
I have just completed a two year study which conducted almost entirely on a virtual network – some people knew each other and many did not – we all came from very different back grounds, but all one way or another, thought of ourselves as involved in participatory work. We went about a long process of creating invitations to connect into completely eclectic and random foci or “threads” - some of which were more enduring than others. What this allowed was for an emergent patterning of person, relationship and body of knowing to come into being. It continues to flourish and flow. I have learned that by trusting the judgements of participants and always valuing both their presence and their absence, little by little we come into a way of being with each other that has the potential for such a profound quality of spirit, learning, love and creativity, a way of being that is so hard to find and so needed in our life worlds. I have learned to trust each person’s voice and to encourage a contemplation on the powers at work in our voicings – whose voices are we hearing in our heads as we write and think, whose do we really hear as we listen to others, what do we understand of the origins of such voices? I have learned, at times, when I am present, to hear the quality of a person at the very moment that their mind and vocal chords actually come together in speech – it’s easy to try – and if I can hold it, I seem to understand people so differently – I can still embrace the meaning and quality of discourse, but also arrive much closer to the person in the moments of speech. I also feel differently within my self – and this is a recurring experience – it is like a liquid calm that seems to reach throughout my body and mind as I listen, I find I stop worrying about whether I will transgress in what I say next and instead hold the silences as the other person needs, and when I can speak, I seem to speak with clarity without rigidity or even authority of an oppressive kind. My work now is to keep growing my capability with this form of dialogue ( I have referred much to Bohm’s work in my thesis) and in the absence of formal practice environments, to make any place an opportunity for such a quality of being.
Having said all this, I also must return to the emails of exhaustion and asserted control. I would simply suggest that there we invite you to rest with the intentions that you felt in writing them, as all of us need to do with all actions we take in the world, that take up such precious and rare resources of time,mind, trust and learning. I for one would be honoured and would learn much if you could peel back the feelings and assumptions in both these transactions, because I feel that they will reveal powerful systemic flows at work, which are inevitably reflective of the life worlds that we all are working in, and are working to make living theory inclusive of in transformative ways. The data for our collective work is right here I think, a meeting point of powerful, potentially clashing, but can we make it something else (?) ways of being together through which extraordinary knowings and shifts in human presence in the world can come about.
I am not going to reread this before I send it as an act of trust in you and myself
Love Susie

On 23/10/06 5:16 PM, "Jack Whitehead" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

On 23 Oct 2006, at 03:41, Susan Goff wrote:
Thanks Jack
I don’t feel that what I have to say and how I want to say it are easily brought into the kind of discourse that I sense this network is keen to create. I am drawn to and work within your constructions of living theory however. I do not wish to distract from what appears to be a well thought through (although I have my critique of course) set of relationships, protocols and outcomes. So please include me on your next network adventure.
Susie

Hi Susie - Because I enjoyed reading your postings and want very much to hear what you have to say and how you want to say it I'm wondering if you would be prepared to stay for a while to explore the possibility that the e-forum could become a space that feels invitational and open to very different perspectives and enquiries. I'd really like to hear your thoughts, especially your critique. I often find responses offered in the spirit of critical friendship help my own enquiries to move on. If you prefer to leave the list all you need to do is to go into join or leave the list section in the What's New section of http://www.actionresearch.net
and click leave and I will certainly include you in the next network adventure.

Love Jack.