[-empyre-] Shopping Mall U

[Michael Angelo Tata, PhD]

Cool--many thanks for the link.  I guess being married to Christ helps: gotta love those Dominican nuns!  I've studied with many.  Oopsola on the mall misreading, but I like the idea of the shopping mall university: it sounds like a Kantian dream come true (that whole "Trustees" of knowledge thing Nick introduced earlier).  TTFN


*******************************************
Michael Angelo Tata, PhD  347.776.1931-USA
http://www.MichaelAngeloTata.com/




 

> Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:28:19 -0500
> From: davinheckman at gmail.com
> To: empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Meta-
> 
> Oh... the URL <www.sienaheights.edu>. Oh... and I was really just
> referring to malls. I don't know that I would call anyone's school a
> shopping mall. I don't know that I would go so far as to criticize
> another scholar's home institution in that way (I have a sister-in-law
> who works for one of the big online universities.... out of
> necessity... but she really tries her best to teach well regardless).
> 
> Davin
> 
> On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 10:22 PM, davin heckman <davinheckman at gmail.com> wrote:
> > My little school is called Siena Heights University.  We're sponsored
> > by Dominican nuns.  We have about 750 full time undergrads on our main
> > campus.  I think it isn't all that uncommon for some of the smaller
> > liberal arts colleges to be this way.  Because the so much of the
> > administrative work is handled by teaching professors, the
> > administrative bureaucracy isn't quite as potent as it is at some
> > places.  On the one hand, I don't have as much time to research and
> > write as I would like....  but on the other hand, the overall
> > atmosphere is very low key.  Also, if I want to advise dissertations,
> > I have to work as a guest advisor with another school.  But, because
> > we are so small, I also work with my most ambitious undergrads very
> > closely, which helps to satisfy that need for intense reading and
> > argument.
> >
> > Small schools have their disadvantages.  And, if you consider teaching
> > at one, it is important to make sure that the culture of the school
> > works for you (fortunately, Siena is progressive, but many schools are
> > quite the opposite).  But, they can be really fine places to work.
> > (More than anything, I tend to enjoy hanging out with my students much
> > more than hanging out with professionals.  It's more unpredictable).
> >
> > Davin
> >
> > On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 6:54 PM, Michael Angelo Tata, PhD
> > <mtata at ipublishingllc.com> wrote:
> >> What is your "little school"???  Can I see the site?  I'd love to learn
> >> more, especially it seems that, from an epistemological, as well as
> >> pedagogical, standpoint, you face some unique challenges and opportunities
> >> so richly different from the ones dealt with by professors at
> >> those Zoloft-enriched, air-conditioned shopping mall universities you refer
> >> to.
> >>
> >> *******************************************
> >> Michael Angelo Tata, PhD  347.776.1931-USA
> >> http://www.MichaelAngeloTata.com/
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 08:31:10 -0400
> >>> From: davinheckman at gmail.com
> >>> To: empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> >>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Meta-
> >>
> >>>
> >>> Steve,
> >>>
> >>> I do think that there is some good sense in maintaining at least
> >>> significant portions of Lyotard's understanding.
> >>>
> >>> For instance, I am working on curriculum revisions at my home
> >>> institution which could change the very nature of the education we are
> >>> providing at my little school. In the 80s and 90s, we drifted in the
> >>> direction of a consumer-oriented approach... we are a very small
> >>> school, so the argument that "We won't treat you like a number" is
> >>> true in a very real sense and a compelling selling point. Like so
> >>> many schools, we searched for meaning in the postmodern environment,
> >>> and, unfortunately, found it in this strategic selling point.
> >>>
> >>> Fortunately, we are too small for such a philosophy to have
> >>> effectively changed what it is that we do. (At least as far as I can
> >>> tell.... I've only been here for 5 years). In many ways, we never
> >>> made the full shift to the service model--we all know each other and
> >>> our students too personally to adopt the sort of detached, serene
> >>> benevolence that reigns in zoloft-enriched shopping environments,
> >>> where secret shoppers enforce friendliness. Plus, we are in Michigan
> >>> and most of our students are first generation, which means that we
> >>> work on the edge of a precipice--on the one hand, we have known for a
> >>> long time that the "new economy" isn't all it's cracked up to be, on
> >>> the other hand, we cannot pretend that our students need to be able to
> >>> survive in whatever situation awaits them. So, while the "service"
> >>> narrative has been there, there are also, I think, stronger narratives
> >>> that run through the school. The task is not to make these narratives
> >>> official, but to hack away at the "consumer" narrative that tends to
> >>> detract from the organic narratives. And, to provide supplemental
> >>> narratives which might help guide this underlying narrative away from
> >>> despair, as the economy becomes grim, and turns us all towards a
> >>> stronger sense of mutual support, solidarity, and creativity. More
> >>> than anything, I don't want my students to feel helpless. I don't
> >>> want them to feel like they need to wait for the answer to come to
> >>> them over the TV or Walmart or GM or Washington. I want them to get
> >>> into the business of making/finding/revising their own answers, in a
> >>> practical sense.
> >>>
> >>> So, I see Lyotard's observation as useful. These grand narratives may
> >>> or may not circulate, but they do not rest upon any sort of certain
> >>> foundation, and even slight scrutiny has the potential to disrupt
> >>> them. In their place, are other narratives, and maybe they can be
> >>> widely held, but I think they fail to rise to the status of "Grand"
> >>> narratives when we accept that they tend to be agreements, which are
> >>> arrived at for the sake of common utility and mutual benefit, and
> >>> which can be discarded.
> >>>
> >>> Now, this brings us back to the question of "liberalism," because this
> >>> certainly is a liberal understanding of commonly held narratives as a
> >>> sort of social contract. But I don't know that the problem is with
> >>> "liberalism" as much as it is with the reification of the fruits of
> >>> liberalism. If a particular narrative emerges as useful, and then we
> >>> try to firm it up in such a way that makes any questioning of the
> >>> narrative into nonsense or blasphemy.... then it becomes something
> >>> other than a social contract. This is where I tend to have the most
> >>> serious issue with "neoliberalism"--on its surface, it seems like a
> >>> valid theory, maybe open markets can lead to the extension of certain
> >>> freedoms (certainly, pornography has loosened up certain attitudes
> >>> towards sex [but it has tightened up others]). The problem is the
> >>> notion that free markets will always lead to the extension of all
> >>> freedoms, even to the absurd point that governments will restrict
> >>> human freedom to protect the market.... why!? Because the market
> >>> will lead to freedom!!!! This is not a social contract. This is
> >>> tyranny, because it forecloses the possibility of a social contract.
> >>> But, the official narrative is that it makes you free! And, of
> >>> course, this narrative is rarely questioned, except through the straw
> >>> men arguments against socialism (which equates even modest regulation
> >>> with Stalinism). [As an interesting aside: In the thick of the
> >>> demonization of socialism in the popular press, Bill Moyers was
> >>> gracious enough to interview Mike Davis:
> >>> http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03202009/profile.html]
> >>>
> >>> I believe that social groups need narratives in which to ground their
> >>> vocabulary... without them, I cannot say with any likelihood that I
> >>> would even begin to understand what we are talking about. We, right
> >>> now, are partially situated within the connective tissue of
> >>> postmodernist discourse. Someone says, "Lyotard this." Another says,
> >>> "Lyotard that." A third says, "No, Lyotard such and such." And, this
> >>> is obvious, we are using this common narrative to situate our specific
> >>> subject positions such that we can have disagreements, and hopefully,
> >>> come to more useful understandings of each other and the narrative
> >>> itself, but mostly about those things which were not initially
> >>> situated within Lyotard's argument.
> >>>
> >>> To bring it back to my own little project.... my little school needs
> >>> to talk about what kind of narrative structure we will operate
> >>> under... not to solidify it for all time... but to give students and
> >>> faculty some places where we can get some traction against the
> >>> prevailing narrative which people only tend to "believe" by default,
> >>> whenever we give off the impression that such a narrative cannot be
> >>> questioned. But, even if we do calcify some narrative that sees the
> >>> prevailing cultural narrative as insufficient, we would accomplish a
> >>> great deal. Nothing is worse than teaching young people that their
> >>> existence can be boiled down to some simple external measure of value
> >>> that they cannot even control, and that, statistically speaking, they
> >>> are destined never to succeed in. It's like a contemporary retelling
> >>> of the literalist interpretation of the biblical 144,000.
> >>>
> >>> Peace!
> >>> Davin
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 3:33 AM, sdv at krokodile.co.uk
> >>> <sdv at krokodile.co.uk> wrote:
> >>> > Joseph,
> >>> >
> >>> > It always interests me how when people write of Lyotard's understanding
> >>> > of the post-modern they write as if his writings of 1979 remain and were
> >>> > accurate. As if the death of the meta-narrative of human liberation
> >>> > meant the death of all meta-narratives. But actually as the past month
> >>> > has demonstrated this is not the case.
> >>> >
> >>> > The Meta-narratives that have survived and proposed during the past 30
> >>> > years since Lyotard's post-modern condition was published are broadly
> >>> > speaking those which can be grouped under the heading 'theories of
> >>> > liberal governance' , the internal arguments being around the subject of
> >>> > how things should be governed - the critical one being neo-liberalism
> >>> > with it's libertarian overtones. Given its existence I don't see how the
> >>> > acceptance of the misreading of the 'passing of grand-narratives' is
> >>> > really that helpful. That the postmodern stopped believing in the
> >>> > narrative of human liberation did not finally mean that the liberal
> >>> > narratives of human governance went away,  it mean rather they were
> >>> > never stronger. So that when Michael writes of meta-N passing he was
> >>> > ignoring our actual history to maintain a particular theoretical
> >>> > understanding which at its best could only address the passing of one
> >>> > set of enlightenment discourses but not the one that we most need to
> >>> > critique that of 'liberal governmentality'.
> >>> >
> >>> > steve
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> > joseph tabbi wrote:
> >>> >> The transcendence of Meta-Narrative as itself a Meta-Narrative?
> >>> >>
> >>> >> Logically, Michael, that makes sense. I suppose it's a question of
> >>> >> where one situates oneself. Lyotard, after all, made the absence of
> >>> >> meta-narratives into a narrative of a new, emergent period, a
> >>> >> 'post-modern' era defined by the loss of faith in the grand narratives
> >>> >> of modernity. Freud, Marx, and Durkeim, once so powerful and capable
> >>> >> of explaining so much, with the passing of time could be seen as
> >>> >> expressive of the hopes, aspirations, oppressions and (consequent?)
> >>> >> repressions of a certain /period/. The fact that the old explanations
> >>> >> failed to convince, or failed to convince in ways that could inspire
> >>> >> widespread dedication to a cause, was an indication that society had
> >>> >> reached a different moment. The transformation in sensibiity occurred,
> >>> >> palpably, whether or not the post-modernists were paradoxical or
> >>> >> contradictory in how they described the occurrence.
> >>> >>
> >>> >> It does seem to be the case that, by Lyotard's time (1970s, '80s), the
> >>> >> only narratives to attain an (admittedly restricted) power, were those
> >>> >> that admitted their own contingency, their dependence on a particular
> >>> >> subject position, their construction of a situated identity. If there
> >>> >> were not so many actual 'petit histoires' on offer, in the cultural
> >>> >> domain, the meta-narrative of postmodernity would not have been
> >>> >> persuasive (at least, not for as long as it was persuasive).
> >>> >>
> >>> >> (for as long as it has been persuasive?)
> >>> >>
> >>> >> But maybe there's another way to look at this. Michael's observation
> >>> >> expresses a paradox: the observation of the passing of grand
> >>> >> narratives is itself a grand narrative. Right. But what if we simply
> >>> >> recognize the development /as/ a paradox? and then take this paradox
> >>> >> as a starting point? as a way of legitimating the proliferation of
> >>> >> mini-narratives? an acknowledgment that our time is derivative, not
> >>> >> likely to have a dominant narrative of its own any time soon?
> >>> >>
> >>> >> Deflation of grandiosity certainly is the rhetoric of the day. "Yes we
> >>> >> can" is about as grand as we can hope for, these days. Yes, /we/ can -
> >>> >> even if Big Government, that mythical grandee, purportedly can't. (Can
> >>> >> I be forgiven for thinking back with nostalgia  to 'nothing to fear
> >>> >> but fear itself,' a slogan from long before I was born?  If the Obama
> >>> >> team really wants to jump-start the economy, the President's
> >>> >> speachwriters might consider the power of paradox and the logic of the
> >>> >> bootstrap.... )
> >>> >>
> >>> >> An admission of paradox (not as a problem in logic but as a starting
> >>> >> point) is in fact the approach taken by Luhmann, when he inaugurates
> >>> >> an alternative to the 'petit histoires' of postmodernity, and when he
> >>> >> attempts to replace talk of "cultures" with descriptions of
> >>> >> "functional systems." I'm away from my library, but I recall Luhmann's
> >>> >> opening an early major work, with something like the sentence: "We
> >>> >> assume there are systems." An essay that I can look up now, online,
> >>> >> opens with a similar move (the systems theorist was nothing if not
> >>> >> consistent):
> >>> >>
> >>> >>   "No one, I think, will dispute the fact of a global system."
> >>> >>    http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpluhmann2.htm
> >>> >>
> >>> >> I cited that once, in an email conversation with Stefanie Strickland,
> >>> >> and Stef responded (immediately): '/I/ dispute it!'
> >>> >>
> >>> >> But the point is not, really, whether a global system exists or not.
> >>> >> There are certainly narratives of globalization that many people
> >>> >> believe in, or we act as though we do. If people believe in a system,
> >>> >> a  description, or a narrative, then that belief offers a starting
> >>> >> point, something to build on. (Not a foundation - that only comes
> >>> >> later, after the system establishes itself, after a sufficient
> >>> >> investment in the system is established, and belief in the system
> >>> >> becomes widespread and self-sustaining.)
> >>> >>
> >>> >> "We don't do grand narratives anymore." That's what society tells
> >>> >> itself nowadays. But this mode of self-understanding doesn't have to
> >>> >> be a contradiction; it can be a way of seeing the grand
> >>> >> meta-narratives of the past for what they are, and marking our own
> >>> >> society as /different/.  We don't do foundations or universals, we
> >>> >> deflate anyone who attempts a grand claim. Or history does the job of
> >>> >> deflation for us: "Mission accomplished" is unlikely to be remembered,
> >>> >> even ironically, for long. Maybe 'You're doing a heckuva job,
> >>> >> Brownie,' will fare better as ecological crises pick up.
> >>> >>
> >>> >> We've gotten over 'grand,' That is what makes our current systems
> >>> >> powerful and also democratic (so we can tell ourselves). Those small
> >>> >> acts of resistance cited by Marc Herbst, "the glorious miasma of
> >>> >> identities [having] the capacity in little and big ways to tilt at
> >>> >> windmills" - what are these, if not elements in a current
> >>> >> counter-narrative to those bygone grandies. Instead of revolution
> >>> >> orchestrated by the state, we have resistance in the everyday,
> >>> >> unorganized and emergent. These acts of resistance are observable,
> >>> >> certainly, for those who know where and how to look for them (in
> >>> >> Ithaca and everywhere, every day). But the notion that these small
> >>> >> acts can add up to something, that they can effect a change or affect
> >>> >> a system in beneficial ways - that is a matter of belief, plain and
> >>> >> simple.
> >>> >>
> >>> >> To observe a system (a former grand narrative), and to use that
> >>> >> observation as a way of marking our own difference: that is a kind of
> >>> >> /re-entry/ (another key term in systems theory). Once we can mark our
> >>> >> difference, the old narratives become no more, or less, grand than the
> >>> >> stories we tell ourselves about  our own place in, solidarity with,
> >>> >> and/or resistance to, the current world system.
> >>> >>
> >>> >> JPT
> >>> >>
> >>> >>
> >>> >>
> >>> >>
> >>> >>> On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 10:27 PM, Michael Angelo Tata, PhD
> >>> >>> <mtata at ipublishingllc.com> wrote:
> >>> >>>
> >>> >>>> I am reminded of Rorty: contingency and irony as a basis for
> >>> >>>> solidarity.
> >>> >>>> Despite pomo-ism, have we transcended the meta-N, or is a meta-N of
> >>> >>>> no
> >>> >>>> meta-N a meta-N after all?
> >>> >>>>
> >>> >>>> *******************************************
> >>> >>>> Michael Angelo Tata, PhD  347.776.1931-USA
> >>> >>>> http://www.MichaelAngeloTata.com/
> >>> >>>>
> >>> >> _______________________________________________
> >>> >> empyre forum
> >>> >> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> >>> >> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> >>> >>
> >>> >>
> >>> > _______________________________________________
> >>> > empyre forum
> >>> > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> >>> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> >>> >
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> empyre forum
> >>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> >>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> >>
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> >>
> >
> _______________________________________________
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