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