"We may feel bitterly how little our poems can do in the face of seemingly out-of-control technological power and seemingly limitless corporate greed, yet it has always been true that poetry can break isolation, show us to ourselves when we are outlawed or made invisible, remind us of beauty where no beauty seems possible, remind us of kinship where all is represented as separation."
Emergent Reflection on Transcendence in Critical Digital Pedagogy. A submission to Hybrid Pedagogy.
Act 1.
Starting points…
“IT” was only ever a draft, a doodle.
Given what emerged, only questions felt satisfactory.
He listed them as they appeared:
What space would these words take up?
How might they move?
What would be their destination?
How could they shape reflection?
Meaning was only forever fluid.
I, er You, We are forever fluid.
He wrote ‘our reflection’ knowingly while thinking of his selves: those selves who carried the text forward and those selves who had fallen silent to enable it.
“IT”, it appeared, insisted on “ITs” voice(s) being heard.
“Who would populate this space?”, he thought.
It was doubt that drove his curiosity.
It was not text as product which intrigued.
It was text as vehicle of discovery.
“Might such text be possible without the digital?”
We thought not.
“I think knot.” he added, annoyingly.
“How might one plan.?”they thought?
It would be “IT” which would count...
“That is what this is”, he thought: “We (i, I, and I’s) are silent.”
“Then there was the word.”
He boldly wrote “TRANSCENDENCE” as a challenge and let whatever “IT” was shape the act.
It gave them hope that “IT” wasn’t finished.
There would be no full stop, no period, for now, space would be pitifully punctuated.
Would “IT” be space for others to draw breath?
Act 2.
Footnotes.
He had kept it secret.
It was a secret that only a few had seen.
IT (Act 2) gnawed away at him.
Release. Release
IT (Act 2) was not a thing to be framed. IT lost its potential. IT was no longer there.
Sarah came and wrote there.
He looked at it.
No that felt wrong.
IT was ruthless.
He tried writing in the space himself.
IT was resistant.
He had sent the “proposal”.
He had waited for a response.
How could anyone depict transcendence? He sent out a message asking for help to some friends on Twitter.
"No one will know who you are, your name is hidden." "You will know your 'corrector'.
"Remember not to write in the margins, for that space is reserved for your correctors." "Your text will be the body of the page." "Your body, sic, will be 'corrected', 'noted', 'marked', 'sorted', 'added to our statistics'. It is a web of lies. "Do not fear injustice as the system is scrupulously fair." "Your examination will be anonymous to protect you from any bias...(to protect us from any accusation of bias)." "Remember to speak in the language which we recognise." "Remember to read the question carefully." "Do not cheat."
(Cheating is reserved for examiners.)
No page is ever blank.
No vessel is ever empty.
Born to the world, "my" story is already long.
I already carry with me other people's burdens, other people's hopes, other people's judgements,
other people's ignorance, other people's breath, other people's rhythm, other people's words, other people's love, other people's indifference, other people's rules, other people's failings, other people's victories, other people's doubts, other people's silences.
Born to the world, "your" story is already long.
You already carry with you other people's burdens, other people's hopes, other people's judgements,
other people's ignorance, other people's breath, other people's rhythm, other people's words, other people's love, other people's indifference, other people's rules, other people's failings, other people's victories, other people's doubts, other people's silences.
No vessel is ever empty.
Speak those stories out loud, listen to them well.
Listen to your body in silence.
Breathe deep and lighten our loads.
Blank pages are loaded.
Examine them closely, then rip them up.
Let us work together, for we must write anew.
Footnotes. On correction. 1."The 'Enlightenment, which discovered the liberties, also invented the disciplines."
2."It's my hypothesis that the individual is not a pre-given entity which is seized on by the exercise of power. The individual, with his identity and characteristics, is the product of a relation of power exercised over bodies, multiplicities, movements, desires, forces."
3."I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and love relationships is true also for life. The game is worthwhile in so far as we don't know where it will end."
Michel Foucault.
Should we fill their vessels? "Twitter does not constitute a place for the shared pursuit of truth, rather it constitutes a shop window in which we can each advertise our merchandise." "In a society which rests not upon a coherent, thoughtful attitude but upon noise and a shared passion for joining in the noise, it may be that silence takes on a new significance." Torn Halves
On reading.
This writing didn't come from nowhere.
It flows from friends. It flows from drawing...breath...from reading...from dreaming...from...research.
I feel like a blind man bashing my head against the walls to find a door or perhaps a window.
No amount of writing within their ruled lines will change us.
On reading Adrienne Rich, I felt less alone last night.
Working on #lesmauxdesmots has sparked off a wild reading web.
I am thankful for this exquisite corpse.
It has life.
Current reading:
Foucault. M., Surveiller et Punir.
Bateson. M., Steps to an Ecology of the Mind.
Henzogenrath. An American Body Politic.
Ong. W.J., Orality and Literacy.
Bell Hooks Teaching to Transgress.
Rich. A. Arts of the Possible.
Brotton. J. A History of the World in Ten Maps.
Acknowledgements
Thank you Chris friend.
Thank you to Laura Ritchie for opening more windows.
It was you Laura who gave me impulse to write this.
She posted an image which I half saw.
I went to sleep and it was that image which I saw for the first time.
Thank you Terry, Kevin, MaryAnn, Torn, Sarah, Dave, Ron, Tania et al for opening windows.
I feel that I am able to breathe more freely in your company.
This work can not be finished.
I don't know where it will lead.
We must indeed close our eyes to more clearly see.
"I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being - neither white, black, brown, or red; and when you are dealing with humanity as a family there's no question of integration or intermarriage. It's just one human being marrying another human being or one human being living around and with another human being."
"All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and men at last are forced to face...the real conditions of their lives and their relations with their fellow men."
Karl Marx
What am I?
You don't know me.
How will you define me?
How long do you have to go beyond the surface?
Seconds to scan me, to eliminate me from your attention/concerns/interests/perimeter.
Race?
Nationality?
Size?
Weight?
Name?
Age?
Profession?
Education?
Language?
Publications?
Social networks?
Credit Rating?
How will you categorise me?
How will you decide whether to continue the conversation beyond your check-list?
How much is it worth taking the time to enter into dialogue, to discover nuance behind the binary?
"Before it can ever be the repose for the senses, landscape is the work of the mind. Its scenery is built up as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock." Simon Schama Landscape and Memory.
I have been roaming. Je suis flâneur. I am one of the "chattering classes".
It is nothing to boast about. I am historically privileged.
That's how it is. It's in my genes. I have been programmed to act like this. My parents had nannies.
I may not be able to do much useful manual work but I am brilliantly adapted to doing nothing.
I roam apparently freely, artfully even, beyond the lines of what others might suggest I should.
I am what some may label an 'activist'...
"If you do, like I do, blog and tweet messily, you are probably an activist."
Goodness, I do feel like a kindred spirit. I am an "Activist"!!
No, Naomi, I am a privileged flâneur.
I walk without luggage but goodness am I weighed down with "enlightening" cultural baggage.
I virtually never wander alone even if I am alone.
I am steeped in Empire stories of "discovery."
There are the pictures of an ancestor in the 18th century Americas.
There is the ancestor's book on the shelf from 19th century Sarawak.
There is the regimental sword from the Highland regiment.
There are the sepia printed photos from a Nagasaki mission post.
I am just doing what is normal for my types...nothing terribly useful to great portent.
(He poses the unfamiliar word there with an fairly ignorant flourish - an amateur [in its privileged sense] needs as many letters as he can get to fill the scroll.)
That's right, I am writing to great portent.
(pretentious git).
I go out with friends, family dead or alive, the dog, and their words, acts, perspectives, music, memories, places.
This page may be in landscape format but to tell you the truth it is really exemplary of my peoplescape.
That's right, it's a clever pun: Landscape is People - People is Escape sic: Peoplescape.
This is a paltry escape, I warrant you.
I don't believe that the way to vanquish alienation is "work" Mr Marx, it's play...amateur play.
I am, as you know, (he places that importantly) set on a odyssey of exploration.
It goes by the name of "lesmauxdesmots".
(God I do enjoy my French - It adds a certain Je ne sais quoi).
I have set sail with a crew of people who are quite, or more or less unaware of this venture whose destination is quite uncharted.
It's a line of navigation that one might call rhizomatic.
I and multiple assemblages are writing myths at this moment.
Those others are both fellow (if unwilling, or unknowing) shipmates and myth-makers.
I do like a bit of myth particularly in May.
Years back when I was working in the parcel depot, we would deal with our alienation with beer, darts, the Mirror and Saturday football.
Now its rhizomatic learning with Deleuze and Guattari and the aforementioned crew.
It is pretty similar really, larking around, these are jolly japes.
We pass the time until it's time to clock orf (chortle).
Roaring, roaming autodidact.
I am an ideal: an idle (amateur), ideal (amateur) self-motivated learner (activist), up to not much good, to borrow Audrey's borrowing of Tressie McMillan Cottom:
“ideal, self-motivated learner," "embedded in the future but dis-embedded from place.” Dis-embedded from place, disembodied – an erasure that just as easily serves as a re-inscription of a “universality” of the white, middle class male." (me)
I do feel Much less ignorant on reading Audrey Watters blog all morning (I don't know about you?)
There were a number of chapters er posts.. that I lapped up.
It says "edupunk" on my Twitter profile but frankly writing it on Blogger is just as well.
I do love Joe Strummer that fellow public school boy "revolutionary".
Yes, I'm with Joe, I'm edupunk, I'm Indie...
"Indie means we don’t need millions of dollars, but it does mean we need community. We need a space to be unpredictable, for knowledge to be emergent not algorithmically fed to us. We need intellectual curiosity and serendipity –"
Oh yes, I have all the time in the afternoon for intellectual curiosity and that gorgeous word 'serendipity' - only a pity that the guys in the parcel depot wouldn't get to know that word.
Being blind drunk allows for serendipity too...if only they knew.
When I roam, I don't see desolation of bombed cities around me.
That's it, I keep having to trace my, er our, your steps.
Let's give it another try.
I went and Storified the hashtag.
This is an absolutely enormous part of the cartography.
It includes an enormous range of elements.
It's giving me a backlog of work to do I can tell you.
It gives one an idea of the monster that is #lesmauxdesmots.
Only a couple of days back Mary Ann suggested that there were a lifetime of words in one blog post and then I was just "Scratching around"
So what is driving this?
I feel like I'm immersed in my son's mind building his village/town/city in Minecraft.
I zoom out, I zoom in, and share bits and pieces with other builders who are busy developing trees, bird song, poetry, philosophical comment, pedagogical criticism.
Thank goodness that rhizo16 was cancelled.
Except even it had not been cancelled it would still be the blasted #lesmauxdesmots.
So I shall shut up and embed that Storify.
I am not quite sure which template will be useful.
“Sight isolates, sound incorporates. Whereas sight situates the observer outside what he views, at a distance, sound pours into the hearer. Vision dissects, as Merleau-Ponty has observed (1961). Vision comes to a human being from one direction at a time: to look at a room or a landscape, I must move my eyes around from one part to another. When I hear, however, I gather sound simultaneously from every directions at once; I am at the center of my auditory world, which envelopes me, establishing me at a kind of core of sensation and existence... You can immerse yourself in hearing, in sound. There is no way to immerse yourself similarly in sight. By contrast with vision, the dissecting sense, sound is thus a unifying sense. A typical visual ideal is clarity and distinctness, a taking apart. The auditory ideal, by contrast, is harmony, a putting together. Interiority and harmony are characteristics of human consciousness. The consciousness of each human person is totally interiorized, known to the person from the inside and inaccessible to any other person directly from the inside. Everyone who says 'I' means something different by it from what every other person means. What is 'I' to me is only 'you' to you... In a primary oral culture, where the word has its existence only in sound... the phenomenology of sound enters deeply into human beings' feel for existence, as processed by the spoken word. For the way in which the word is experienced is always momentous in psychic life.”
― Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word
