March 2006
In the last while my thoughts have returned to our Tuesday evening face-to-face conversation in Playa del Carmen (International Summer Institute, June 2005).
Remember our simple meeting room, the narrow path leading to it, the sounds of tropical birds as we sipped our drinks... Remember the contrast between the bustle of the larger ISI group - the fullness of the day, and the quietness at the outset of our smaller gathering. Remember too, the intermingling of our voices, so many distinct accents, the rhythm of translation... while outside, the temperature was cooling with the setting of the Mexican sun.
I welcomed you all to this collaborative project, naming it a "building site for knowledge." We stayed with the building metaphor for a few moments, pleased to imagine knowledge as a social construction, with various rooms, wings and architectural features, situated within a neighborhood, nearby other constructions.
In this last month I noticed I have, at some point, left this building metaphor behind.
My focus is steadily shifting from 'noun' to 'verb.' My background in the social sciences has trained my eye to see 'stability' - conventions, patterns, classifications, models, typologies, forms, systems, frameworks - and other (dead) things. In the social sciences we have (for how long now?) been very busy with the production of nouns!
This process of inquiry, in contrast, turns attention towards living movement, mess, spontaneity, commotion... It privileges processes of becoming, however minute or incremental... it heightens awareness of the present, fleeting moment, the continual ebb and flow of 'utterance' and 'response.' Knowledge, then, is better likened to the process of building, rather than the building itself.
But, pressing still further... I wonder if we might do well to abandon the building metaphor altogether. Paraphrasing Bakhtin: To live means to participate in dialogue... wholly and throughout our whole lives: with our eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, with our whole bodies and deeds. We invest our entire selves... We participate... not only with our thoughts, but with our fate...
Perhaps knowledge can be understood as dialogical interchange, the essence of life, with its power to transform, sometimes forcefully and without invitation, in the most intimately personal and publicly social ways.
"The most accurate way of knowing is coincidence,
and this way of knowing is relational
and not the truth." Tapio Malinen
And in response to the challenge of seeing "what is always before our eyes," this fragment from Looking at Photographs:
"Photography,
if practiced with high seriousness,
is a contest between photographer
and the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing.
The contest can be held anywhere -
on a city sidewalk,
or in a scientific laboratory
or among the markers
of ancient dead gods." John Szarkowski
So, away from presumption and habit towards living, relational, dialogical, 'in-process' understandings of knowledge. "Help stamp out nouns," as they say :-)
Warm spring greetings to everyone!
Janice
Remember our simple meeting room, the narrow path leading to it, the sounds of tropical birds as we sipped our drinks... Remember the contrast between the bustle of the larger ISI group - the fullness of the day, and the quietness at the outset of our smaller gathering. Remember too, the intermingling of our voices, so many distinct accents, the rhythm of translation... while outside, the temperature was cooling with the setting of the Mexican sun.
I welcomed you all to this collaborative project, naming it a "building site for knowledge." We stayed with the building metaphor for a few moments, pleased to imagine knowledge as a social construction, with various rooms, wings and architectural features, situated within a neighborhood, nearby other constructions.
In this last month I noticed I have, at some point, left this building metaphor behind.
My focus is steadily shifting from 'noun' to 'verb.' My background in the social sciences has trained my eye to see 'stability' - conventions, patterns, classifications, models, typologies, forms, systems, frameworks - and other (dead) things. In the social sciences we have (for how long now?) been very busy with the production of nouns!
This process of inquiry, in contrast, turns attention towards living movement, mess, spontaneity, commotion... It privileges processes of becoming, however minute or incremental... it heightens awareness of the present, fleeting moment, the continual ebb and flow of 'utterance' and 'response.' Knowledge, then, is better likened to the process of building, rather than the building itself.
But, pressing still further... I wonder if we might do well to abandon the building metaphor altogether. Paraphrasing Bakhtin: To live means to participate in dialogue... wholly and throughout our whole lives: with our eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, with our whole bodies and deeds. We invest our entire selves... We participate... not only with our thoughts, but with our fate...
Perhaps knowledge can be understood as dialogical interchange, the essence of life, with its power to transform, sometimes forcefully and without invitation, in the most intimately personal and publicly social ways.
"The most accurate way of knowing is coincidence,
and this way of knowing is relational
and not the truth." Tapio Malinen
And in response to the challenge of seeing "what is always before our eyes," this fragment from Looking at Photographs:
"Photography,
if practiced with high seriousness,
is a contest between photographer
and the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing.
The contest can be held anywhere -
on a city sidewalk,
or in a scientific laboratory
or among the markers
of ancient dead gods." John Szarkowski
So, away from presumption and habit towards living, relational, dialogical, 'in-process' understandings of knowledge. "Help stamp out nouns," as they say :-)
Warm spring greetings to everyone!
Janice
posted by Janice DeFehr at 11:28 dop.
<< Home