Evolving Systems: August 2009 Core Group Meeting

(I started to work on this the day after we met. It's taken til now to draw to a --tentative -- close.)

At yesterday's meeting, I began to noodle in the direction of an articulation of the different manifestations of "against-ness" in the three essays we read. What struck me was that these three writers had markedly different ways of being "against" and I was interested in exploring their differing strategies rather than "boiling down" their "againstnesses" to the kinds of schematic templates we ended up considering. I want to try to do a little better here and be a little clearer (and more personal, for good or ill); what I want to do is to use my own intuition towards *opposing* what seemed to be a gathering consensus understanding of "againstness".

Beginning with a description of that intuitive process.

I want to share, at the launch of this, that the intuitive testing of oppositional impulses is a basic function of the way my mind encounters the world. No, not merely my mind. My being. (An anthropologist pal of mine claimed once that when creatures in the wild encounter something strange, the first two hypotheses they explore are "can I eat it?" and if the answer to that is no, they proceed to testing "Well then, can I mate with it?" In my world, when I encounter a new idea or even a new situation, my impulsive strategies run towards the ways in which I can test that thing by opposing it in a number of ways.

The first point I want to make is that my oppositional strategies are not monolithic. There are a wide range of "againstnesses" that I make use of. there are linguistic strategies, sensual strategies, politcal and spiritual resonances to be tested, etc. In our discussion, we settled on a diagram in which "against" was as subtle as an icepick through the forehead, but I want to argue that the diversity of againstnesses constitutes the essence (for me) of knowing.

If I can push against something and I can move it, then I know how strong it is. If I can tease it, and find the structure of a joke that I can make between it and me, then I can test out both its relative friendliness and the way (a way) that the New Thing reacts when it is caught up in the net of language. Through joking and teasing and pushing, I also begin to discover the place of the New Thing in relation to me. (I note in passing my childhood adoration of the character that Morey Amsterdam played on the Dick Van Dyke Show. There is a way of knowing through humor and the jokes that one can make about something can reveal much of it--and you.)

When we spoke of “againstness” in our meeting, I had the impression that, for some of you, the primary intuitive ways that you encounter new structures and new ideas are different. "Against" had the tenor, in our discussion, as risky, as only possible within a sacred trust-circle. And that the sorts of opposition I’m describing are perhaps foreign to some of you.

Perhaps I reveal too much of my own inner life if I say that the feeling of being “outside” a structure (whether it’s an academic structure, a civic structure, a domestic institution, or a cocktail party) comes quite naturally to me. There are some structures (Bryn Mawr College, for one) with which I have made my peace. But I never expect to feel fully embrace/enveloped/ contained/ at *one* with ANY structure.

Joseph Conrad wrote, “We live as we dream, alone” and I recall, when I was a junior in High School, inking that onto the toe of one of my sneakers so that it wouldn't slip my mind. I’ve grown out of the comfortable pose that my easy adolescent existentialism provided). And I’ve learned to live in relation to the structures that are necessary to facilitate the new (and relatively easier) easiness of my adult life.

But I still want to argue for againstness, and for the diversity of againstnesses, as a primary way (ways plural really) in which one can know oneself and a primary way (ways, again) to come to know the worlds around and within us.

When Sontag asks us to be “against” interpretation, she asks us to be “for” the primary sensual, psychic, spiritual and intellectual experiences that we can have when we experience a work of art DIRECTLY, as a thing in our field of engagement with the world. Apart from the preconceived, predigested, academic clap-trap with which a potentially potent object, text or experience, can be smothered. And I want to argue that the direct experience of the world is really not so dangerous after all, not (at least) for those of us dwelling in ivory towers. One of our roles as teachers, I hope, is to demonstrate to our students that it is possible to be exploring the world as we live and reporting an honest and complete accounting of our moments of living as we teach them and as we pursue our idiosyncratic philosophical inquiries.

Is there a real cost to us if we actually say what we think? If we politely disagree at faculty meetings? If we dress to teach in the same clothes we might wear to meet our friends for a drink? If we admit at gatherings of our professional associates that we have some questions about the basic assumptions that most of our peers make in their work? To me, having the freedom to do these things is what makes it worthwhile to be here, to be earning (as well you know) less than a lawyer. Or the manager of a McDonalds. Before you answer (for yourselves) consider what “real” means in “real cost” (for yourself).

Last crackpot observation of the morning (from me anyway): I wonder if we don’t make up groups for ourselves in order to comfort ourselves against the (authentic) experience of being alone. White. Straight. Man. We know that all of these categories are slippery. And my experience of each of these, even from the so-called comfortable side of the hegemony is fraught. I feel no strong social or spiritual bond with my fellow heterosexuals. None. Deep down, I think, we all recognize that we are our own personal sexual minorities, that we are necessarily one-person liberation movements that may or may not succeed in finding comfort and fulfillment in our lifetimes. Because no one else seeks comfort, connection, release, whatever it is that we find in our erotic lives, in quite the same way that we do.

That’s a terrifying and perhaps even a shaming thought.

But we can choose to live our loving lives, perhaps, in one of two ways. We can choose to associate ourselves with groups (who have worked out through their literature, their web sites, their rites, and their various “normalizing” procedures) which can institutionalize our desires. Or we can choose to explore the world, rather, as unlabeled entities, testing our perceived needs against a variety of pure experiences, through a diversity of againstnesses, caressing and groping our ways in the dark (or the light) towards the elusive, individuated, pleasure(s) that can we might find for ourselves, for our very own authentic selves, if we are willing to risk appearing to another as an individual.

Consider, for yourself, the variety of "againstnesses" that we experience, or might experience in our erotic lives in both the physical and psychic manifestations of our loving. In only this one manifestation of our being, there are so many ways in which we can perceive another, know the world, experience ourselves. In other, less private manifestations of our beings, in our faculty meetings and academic writing, there are as many ways to be "against", to test and to tease, to tickle and to provoke. (Etcetera.)

"Opposition" is neither frightening nor monolithic. "Against" is a category of knowing and being that contains multitudes. It can't be charted. Or not simply anyway.