Dear Robyn,
I must try to keep this short, as I have so many essays awaiting marking, not to mention other commitments.
I was moved to hear you describe your nervousness about appearing a bit pedestrian in the face of discussions about 'inclusionality'. I suspect many others may feel the same, and that this sometimes manifests in a call for 'getting on with the job', not getting bogged down in theoretical consideration. It may also give rise to calls for openness that somehow imply that inclusionality is a totalizing theory (which it isn't).
There is a danger of theory 'othering' practice and practice 'othering' theory in all this, which I would dearly like to avoid. And I really do not want people to feel daunted or oppressed by 'inclusionality' - that really is the antithesis of its and my intention. What I would like people to feel, even if they do not want to speak explicitly about it (and in many circumstances it can be counter-productive to do so), is that, behind the scenes, 'there IS a consistent and coherent form of reasoning, beyond objective rationality, that underlies my living educational practice and includes room for my emotional values'.
The hole point of natural inclusionality - as a 'living theory', new 'epistomology' and 'ontology' - is to provide a sensitive and sensible logical foundation for practice, which allows the practice and the theory to relate co-evolutionarily to one another. So there is nothing pedestrian and much that is vital about talking about practice and how this might or might not relate to theory. The ramifications of the theory, simple as it is at heart, are radical and far-reaching in their implications for practice and vice versa. I don't feel I fully comprehend all these implications either.
The relevance of natural inclusionality to your practical question lies, I think, in addressing the question 'how do I visualize my self in relation to the way I live and practice?'. As you say, your research is grounded in 'me' (I mean you!) and 'my' practice. So, who, what and where is 'me', and what is 'mine'? You have answered this question in terms of 'someone who works alongside others' - which establishes a dynamic relationality between yourself and those you work with. To me this sounds akin to Einstein's way of visualizing the gravitational relationship between 'matter' (as a ball of mass) and 'space-time' (as a rubbery fabric) in which 'matter tells space-time how to curve and space-time tells matter how to move'. Far-reaching and imaginative as it is, it doesn't work out in practice, ultimately because there is still an absolute discontinuity ('cut') invoked in the boundary limit between 'one' and the 'other'.
In natural inclusionality, due to the continuity of space across figural boundaries, each mutually includes the other, whilst remaining dynamically distinct. In practice, this means being open and receptive to other's influence in a co-creative evolutionary relationship, whilst sustaining dynamic local identity (integrity, if you like). 'Me' is an 'including middle' that participates in [is energised by and contributes to] a spatially continuous evolutionary flow, in which what is 'mine' flows into what is 'yours', and what is 'yours' flows into what is 'mine' without losing my or your identity. It varies the openness {without ever absolutely closing} of its interfacing boundaries in accord with circumstances. In practice, this means being variably receptive, responsive and reflective (which implies 'protective') according to situation. This is how I feel you describe your practice, and your need, when faced with intransigence, to be a 'tough nut' and not a 'fluffy bunny'. Negativity (receptivity) and positivity (responsiveness) and neutrality (dynamic balance) are all equally vital and mutually inclusive in sustainable energy flow dynamics. Sustaining balance is a living art. The art of the receptive-reflective-responsive self and educator as an 'including middle'.
I hope this is helpful and clarifying. But it's not as short as I hoped...
Warmest
Alan
----- Original Message -----
From: Robyn Pound
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2010 5:39 AM
Subject: Re: To be inclusional
Ernie, Alan, Susan, Marie...
I was struck by the similarity in this conversation with a major contradiction presenting itself in my research into my practice as health visitor in the UK (community public health nursing working with families). I nearly didn't reply because I usually feel the topic under discussion is about inclusionality leaving my interest in practice looking a bit pedestrian. I have no problem with inclusionality except that when the discussions are grounded in it I have to summon my courage to offer my ideas. Marie's words prompted me:
'I hope that others might also be willing to make their accounts public and in doing so make a life-enhancing difference to the learning of self, others and the social formations in which we live and work, and ultimately improve the educational experience of more children and young people.'
Through my living theory process to discover how I could improve my practice working with parents of young children in their communities I came up with what I call an alongside epistemology. Alongsideness for me is a way of being in practice but it turned out also to be a way of being in research and knowledge creation. Alongsideness fits many of the criteria of inclusionality I believe, but may not fit for anyone else because it is grounded in my life. I love inclusionality because it feels familiar and true. I don't understand everything about it and don't even feel the need to follow every line of its thinking. As a living theorist it was a wonderful liberating moment when towards the end of my research process I could finally answer the troubling question raised repeatedly by one of my research supervisors, 'where is your research grounded'? It wasn't grounded in any one discipline or theory. Of course! Bingo I got it. It is grounded in me and my practice! For me as living theory researcher, other people's theories are valuable to me in as much as they influence the development of my thoughtful practice. Good, got that out of the way.
The real reason I replied was to tell you of the dilemma presenting itself in different ways throughout my research that relates to the topic of disagreement. Alongsideness as I see it, is full of the values I unearthed for myself as I went along my journey. They are positive and warm and when (if!) I live them they really work to improve the lives they touch. But what happens when I can't be unconditionally warm and affirming such as in child protection arenas that feel a bit like war sometimes? There is no instant glib answer to this except that I need to remind myself that it is my responsibility to act in response to the situation before me for the sake of the child, even when it is counter to the opinions of the parent with whom I communicate. The values of alongsideness are not negated because we do not agree and because I my use my professional power for one person's benefit over the wishes of another. My core values of respect, connection, self determination, encouragement etc. are even more important if communication and action are to be for the benefit of those who are too powerless to act for themselves - children. If I am to continue working with this family and continue supporting their process of improving their lives (for the sake of children at this point) then I have to keep our relationship going in ways that both contain habitual destructive ways of acting and encourages hope for the future.
I am interested to know how others make sense of these situations which appear so contradictory to usual ways of being but are essential to addressing misuse of power or worse abuse through neglect, which can have such disastrous effects on children.
It seems there is similarity here with the different scenarios you have been talking about.
Robyn
--- On Mon, 24/5/10, Ernie Stringer <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Ernie Stringer <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: To be inclusional
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Monday, 24 May, 2010, 3:26
Alan,
I'd like to add my voice to your comment. I've found over the years that by including all stakeholders in action research activities that those we might think of as oppressors are usually also seeking effective solutions to the issues we are investigating. As managers/administrators/leaders, they are as puzzled and frustrated as anyone, and open to processes that assist and support them to deal more effectively with those issues. By working alongside them and including them as participants, they become effective partners in the developments that need to occur. Often they are able to open doors, help gain access to resources, and provide useful information that strengthens the research process. They assist, in many cases of strengthening the analyses that are part of the research process, and provide access to the organizational processes that enable change and development to become incorporated into the systems for which they have responsibility. In other words, they become part of the critical, exploratory processes that enable all stakeholders to understand more clearly the dynamics of the situation, and to formulate more effective solutions to the issues on which our AR processes are focused. Inclusionality has been a highly effective part of my experience.
Having said that, there are occasionally situations I have encountered where key stakeholders have remained hidden behind bureaucratic walls, and hindered our activities significantly, creating much extra work and sometimes requiring political action to bring these dynamics into the light. Over the years, however, this has been required in only a small minority of cases, and the need for taking political action emerges only when it is clear that it is needed.
There are clearly contexts where the need for political action, and a confrontational critical stance is most appropriate. This difference in orientation marks a clear difference between "north" and "south" orientations to AR, where the PAR processes associated with the needs of the poor in developing nations is more clearly evident. In more general terms I think of it in the context of an Australian term-- "horses for courses"-- a reference to the need to make your choice according to the needs of the context.
I hope this attempt at inclusionality works for you all!
Regards,
Ernie
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Date: Sun, 23 May 2010 10:20:02 +0100
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: To be inclusional
To: [log in to unmask]
Dear Susan,
Natural inclusional thinking is not without discernment. It does seek to reveal and protect from the oppressive influence of 'intransigent' thought, but does not directly oppose, alienate and so preclude the possibility of transforming intransigent thought into something more open to others' energetic influence. As Osho put it: 'A man of peace is not against war, for to be against anything is to be at war'.
Warmest
Alan
----- Original Message -----
From: Susan Goff
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Sunday, May 23, 2010 6:39 AM
Subject: Re: To be inclusional
Hello Alan
I am interested to understand how critical practice fits within your embracing of all things. Does natural inclusion make the outing of hidden and powerful powers of oppression a stance that you do not hold? I am open to encountering how this is thought of by you
Susan
On 22/05/10 7:07 PM, "Alan Rayner (BU)" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Dear All,
In a parallel correspondence list, I was delighted to receive the following comment:
"This simplicity is for me the great thing about "inclusional thinking". What does it mean to be inclusional after all? To be open and receptive to embrace all things, to open ones eyes and mind's eye, that is all. Does this not in itself inspire joy, diversity and inner wealth?"
I couldn't agree more!
The difficulty I perceive is that this natural inclusional way of being and seeing is inconsistent with the intransigent logic of definitive exclusion from 'other' that most of us have become accustomed to, and which reaches deep and divisively into purely objective science, mathematics, theology, governance, economics, language and education.
This is why I have been trying to co-develop and explicate a different kind of logic of 'the including middle', which to my mind corresponds with 'living educational theory', that acknowledges the continuity of 'transfigural' space across 'figural' boundaries. Without this underlying logic, the inclusional way of being (and of educating) lacks the foundation of what rationalists might call 'intellectual justification': it might even be dismissed as the product of well-meaning but wishful thinking, out of touch with harsh reality. With this underlying logic, it can be shown that abstract objectivity [and the harsh reality of human social organization that has arisen from it] lacks intellectual justification, because it is founded on an unrealistic premise of independence of space from form that is inconsistent with evidence and cannot make consistent (i.e. non-paradoxical) sense.
I know that this 'intellectual' aspect of 'natural inclusionality', and the way I try to express it, is what many find 'difficult', 'off-putting' and 'bewildering'. It is certainly difficult to express and sustain in an adversarial culture antithetical to its understanding. I may be mistaken in thinking it is necessary if the 'space for all viewpoints' that some members of this list (and who paradoxically appear to regard natural inclusionality as an antithetical denial of such openness) have called for is to be sustained, and even more necessary if our educational practice is to be truly thoughtful - considerate of our natural neighbourhood.
The comment quoted above arose from a discussion about 'silence and inclusionality'. Here is how I tried to respond to it, both intellectually and feelingly:
"Correspondingly, in real life, sound and silence are mutually inclusive, just as energy and space, light and darkness, 'figural' and 'transfigural' are mutually inclusive. Space/silence alone would be lifeless - the unnatural, formless 'death' that you describe. Energy/sound alone - without space/silence within, without and throughout - is unthinkable. Silence is in the receptive heart of your 'soul', which 'loves the noise of life'.
At heart, as you say, and as your descriptions affirm, this is terribly simple. Our human problem is that this simplicity can get overlaid with layer upon layer of complication, which can take an age of complicated unravelling to bring back into the deep focus of our mind's eye - especially an intellectual mind's eye! But having produced all that intellectual complication - built on the flawed logic that isolates silence from sound and can even claim to have created artificial life by inserting a computer-synthesized copy of a bacterial genome into a living bacterium - that task of unravelling becomes necessary. Meanwhile, those who know simply what it means to 'be an inhabitant' - to be open and receptive to embrace all things - can live in the woods and wonder."
In another, related, piece of correspondence I wrote:
"'Breakdown' occurs when the 'figural' is mentally dislocated by intransigent definition from 'transfigural', and 'mind' strives to serve its own possessive purpose instead of fulfilling its 'heart's desire'. 'Breakthrough' comes with acknowledgement of the continuity of transSpace through the complex veil of figural boundaries."
I guess I'd better practice some silence now, and get around to reading nearly 160 student essays submitted, along with nearly 80 pieces of extremely varied creative writing and artwork, for my final year undergraduate course on 'life, environment and people'.
Warmest
Alan
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