Comments on: The Plain Truth, Please!

By: Meme: Passion Quilt « Dead Voles

Meme: Passion Quilt « Dead Voles — Tue, 13 May 2008 17:42:05 +0000

[...] to turn my students, most of them from non-academic backgrounds, into the sorts of people I and Mikhail enjoy talking with. People who, as Bourdieu says, share an interest in disinterest. People with [...]

By: Carl

Carl — Sat, 03 May 2008 21:10:05 +0000

Yes.

I think it’s useful to distinguish indifference from dispassion or disinterest. I tell my students that the very best thing about history (my field) from a learning standpoint is that it’s not interesting. That is, they don’t have an interest in it - it’s not in their interest. As a result, they can look at history dispassionately and actually learn how to do a quality analysis without their interests slipping in and distorting things.

(Of course they do anyway; standpoints, biases and prejudices are fully portable. But the fewer there are and the less immediately activated, the more chance that ‘differance’ can expose them.)

Gramsci had this view in relation to learning dead languages. He thought the ability to analyze disinterestedly and think systematically was actually one of the elite skills that kept them on top and that the proletariat needed; and that a more practical, relevant, immediately interesting public education was accordingly a swindle and a tool of domination. Confirming people in their common sense when that common sense has always already been hegemonized is not liberatory education.

Well, Gramsci was a bit of a discipline freak, but the point is good. So I think if we’re doing it right we’re showing students the mental dispositions to think more deeply and effectively; and like any skillset, that does take discipline and practice.

By: Mikhail Emelianov

Mikhail Emelianov — Sat, 03 May 2008 16:15:40 +0000

Not sure if I can really flesh out a specific strategy for fighting indifference - sometimes I wonder if it is really my job - I mean I try to motivate students, use relevant examples, sometimes appeal to their lack of long-term attention span and all, but there are times I openly tell them that studying philosophy requires good old fashioned reading and writing plus a lot of boredom - everything from what Heidegger called “superficial boredom” to “profound boredom” - it’s a good skill, I say, an ability to be bored without going crazy… but then I feel as if I’m preparing them to be good obedient citizens who will do as they’re told…

By: Carl

Carl — Fri, 02 May 2008 20:49:25 +0000

You’re right, indifference is a much more powerful defense. I’d say that in many cases it’s actually a second skin layered on top of arrogance or insecurity (but what am I saying, so often arrogance is itself an anxiety defense). So there’s a lot of therapy in teaching… have you found any strategies that get through better than others?

By: Mikhail Emelianov

Mikhail Emelianov — Fri, 02 May 2008 11:58:27 +0000

Carl, unfortunately you’re right about the poles of the stupid - however, I think it is for the most part a challenge to even solicit any of the two reactions, mostly it’s a kind of indifference to the text that, I think, is the main problem. If student genuinely feels that she’s “stupid” because she cannot understand a text, it’s a good start because at least then I can do my job and explain that it is not so. And even if someone dismisses the text, which is not that often as young people tend to trust the authority of the published text (and not only young people, I’m afraid), it’s still a good start as arrogance is better than indifference…

By: Carl

Carl — Thu, 01 May 2008 05:20:23 +0000

Mikhail, I didn’t quite do justice to your discussion here in my reference. I really like your focus on the pedagogical opportunities afforded by ‘difficult’ texts. And I couldn’t agree more with your description of education as a process of gradual humiliation designed to produce people we’ll actually enjoy talking with.

Shahar, I also agree about the affective pitch. In my experience students have one of two basic reactions to a text they find difficult. They either think “This is stupid” or they think “I’m stupid.” The first group needs to be gently humiliated out of their self-defeating hubris, the second gently encouraged out of their self-defeating humiliation. Usually both can be accomplished at once by showing the second group how to be smart with the text, in the process demonstrating to the first group that their smart-assy reaction was narrow and ignent.

I must be an old-fashioned liberal. I still think of learning to read as a process of empowerment.

By: Elective affinities « Dead Voles

Elective affinities « Dead Voles — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:47:32 +0000

[...] by Carl on April 29, 2008 There’s a multiblog conversation going on about the merits, functions, affects and effects of writing in [...]

By: Style « Larval Subjects .

Style « Larval Subjects . — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 02:46:36 +0000

[...] 25, 2008 Style Posted by larvalsubjects under Politics, Writing Perverse Egalitarianism has an interesting post up on “difficult books”. A taste: I have been thinking along [...]

By: Shahar Ozeri

Shahar Ozeri — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:52:41 +0000

Perhaps, and I certainly would have appealed to my status as Jew, but as I remember it I don’t think they even asked me, I’m beyond help! I think they asked you right in front of me, but I don’t recall you jumping at any chance to attend church then or….ever! Face it, you’re just as screwed as me, Mikhail!

That phrase Homer uses to describe Flanders on The Simpsons kept coming to mind that weekend, viz., Churchy Le Femme.

By: Mikhail Emelianov

Mikhail Emelianov — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:45:27 +0000

Technically, Shahar, God only hates you because you refused to go to church with the nice Christian folks claiming to be - what was it? - Jewish!