Re: [xmca] critique of pure tolerance

[Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu>]

It must be the beer, mate!

JAY.

Jay Lemke
Professor (Adjunct, 2009-2010)
Educational Studies
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke 

Visiting Scholar
Laboratory for Comparative Human Communication
University of California -- San Diego
La Jolla, CA
USA 92093






On Jan 7, 2010, at 11:04 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:

> Speak for yourself, Yank!
> :)
> andy
> 
> Jay Lemke wrote:
>> The Anglo-Saxon cultural tradition, I regret to say, does not have much of a sense of humor.
>> JAY.
>> Jay Lemke
>> Professor (Adjunct, 2009-2010)
>> Educational Studies
>> University of Michigan
>> Ann Arbor, MI 48109
>> www.umich.edu/~jaylemke Visiting Scholar
>> Laboratory for Comparative Human Communication
>> University of California -- San Diego
>> La Jolla, CA
>> USA 92093
>> On Jan 3, 2010, at 8:42 PM, yuan lai wrote:
>>> I don't know what genuinely pluralist conditions and elements are, Jay. I
>>> would think one thing is a willingness to acknowledge that we have a problem
>>> to deal with. Some Canadians, who are proud of its history of embracing
>>> multiculturalism, say to me, when I mention racism, that we don't the
>>> problem of overt racism in the US. To me, a petty crime or white collar
>>> crime still is a problem to acknowledge as a first step.
>>> 
>>> I think of Zhuangzi as a Chinese exemplar of critical thinking (he was said
>>> to flourish 350-300 BC). *http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zhuangzi/*  That
>>> is, if you believe that the encyclopedia is generally trustworthy, that the
>>> translation is good enough to allow evaluation of Zhuangzi's words, and so
>>> on.
>>> 
>>> How do we speak to politicans so they understand the seriousness of the
>>> matter at hand, testing babies? In general I favor the idea of silliness.
>>> American politicians enjoy or at least get football, right? Did skilled
>>> football players, when they were 2, 5, or 15 years old, practice isolated,
>>> decontextualized skills, catching a ball in midair and staying there or, as
>>> a ball is thrown, players running away from each other to show who is
>>> fastest? (I know, I am being silly) Even professional football players work
>>> on developing critical thinking; a neighbor, a CFL player, told me that his
>>> team spent more time indoors, watching videotaped games, than out in the
>>> field. But politicians understanding is one thing, acting on that
>>> understanding is another.
>>> 
>>> Yuan
>>> 
>>> On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 11:46 AM, Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Nancy and all,
>>>> 
>>>> Dialogue is both the most natural form of communication and also an
>>>> improvable art. It does easily degenerate into binary, partisan
>>>> polarization, and I think we know that historically this tends to lead to
>>>> violence and to long-lasting, even multi-generational conflicts. It is also
>>>> a favorite tool of politicians, especially those who wish to move from being
>>>> the representatives of a small minority to building their one-issue, or
>>>> one-enemy coalitions of the uncritical.
>>>> 
>>>> But it can, on the other hand, become the art of reciprocal perspectives
>>>> and dialectic advance of ways of seeing the world and acting in it, if we
>>>> can find ways to re-enunciate the words of Others, to re-adjust the scope of
>>>> common ground, to do what majority politicians usually aim for, "bringing us
>>>> all together". Of course that is a somewhat unrealistic ideal, and it too
>>>> degenerates into pushing majority views onto everybody, so learning nothing.
>>>> 
>>>> Pluralist societies seem to require a certain kind of general cultural
>>>> ethos, and I am not sure that the US really has it. Interestingly, a
>>>> frequently cited example of a genuinely successful pluralist culture/society
>>>> is Hawai'i, Obama's home. I don't know what specifically the elements of a
>>>> genuinely pluralist culture are. What cultural values or habits predispose
>>>> people to tolerance? to curiosity about the viewpoints of Others? to a
>>>> desire to learn across differences? to a disinclination towards simplistic
>>>> analyses and polarizations?
>>>> 
>>>> Most historical societies seem to contain both tendencies, towards
>>>> pluralism and toward monologism. Times of prosperity seem to favor
>>>> tolerance, times of scarcity feed intolerance.
>>>> 
>>>> What else do we know about the conditions for productive pluralism?
>>>> 
>>>> JAY.
>>>> 
>>>> Jay Lemke
>>>> Professor (Adjunct, 2009-2010)
>>>> Educational Studies
>>>> University of Michigan
>>>> Ann Arbor, MI 48109
>>>> www.umich.edu/~jaylemke <http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke>
>>>> 
>>>> Visiting Scholar
>>>> Laboratory for Comparative Human Communication
>>>> University of California -- San Diego
>>>> La Jolla, CA
>>>> USA 92093
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Dec 29, 2009, at 5:39 AM, Nancy Mack wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Jay,
>>>>> I like your emphasis on the Bakhtinian cross-difference discourse.
>>>>> I am alarmed by the over emphasis on argument in first year composition
>>>> courses and the new language arts core standards.
>>>>> The emphasis on argument:
>>>>> Eliminates narratives of individuals.
>>>>> Promotes binary thinking.
>>>>> Asks us not to reflect on our life experiences.
>>>>> Sets us up to be one issue voters.
>>>>> Makes the world a safe, uncomplex world of simple decisions.
>>>>> Creates enemies from difference.
>>>>> Makes peace into oppression.
>>>>> Prefers logic rather than ethics.
>>>>> Polarizes emotion as the opposite to logic.
>>>>> Prefers discourse that badgers rather than communicates.
>>>>> Disrespects different world views and philosophies.
>>>>> Divides us into winners and losers.
>>>>> Privileges dogma over openness.
>>>>> And so on.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Nancy
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>>> From: Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu>
>>>>> Date: Monday, December 28, 2009 10:14 pm
>>>>> Subject: [xmca] critique of pure tolerance
>>>>> To: XMCA Forum <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On the ethics of engaging respectfully with positions you really
>>>>>> strongly disagree with.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Recap: some of us are trying to figure out effective ways to
>>>>>> challenge conservative/oppressive discourses about education and
>>>>>> other matters in ways that are not as likely to be marginalized
>>>>>> as many left rhetorical strategies have become in many places
>>>>>> and for many audiences.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> One strategy might be to see what the core values and discourses
>>>>>> of those to whom our opponents appeal might say that is more to
>>>>>> our way of thinking. For example, what Christian discourse may
>>>>>> say that is in favor of critical thinking, or against the
>>>>>> priority of decontextualized learning, or just against the
>>>>>> "gospel of prosperity" (which, if you haven't seen recent news
>>>>>> interest in this is an explicit movement in fundamentalist US
>>>>>> christianity that says God wants you to get rich).
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> In doing so, however, we tread the slippery slope. Historically
>>>>>> the Anglo-Saxon left has been rather purist, and its internal
>>>>>> squabbles have mainly been over who is more perfectly
>>>>>> marxist/democratic/etc. Leaving not much room to develop
>>>>>> discourses that overlap or penetrate those of the non-left
>>>>>> majority (who in the US are also mostly non-right). Something
>>>>>> different happened in Latin America, where a fusion of Catholic
>>>>>> populism and left communitarianism did a much better job of
>>>>>> appealing to both rural populations and university intellectuals
>>>>>> (Freire as a case in point, but he is part of a much larger
>>>>>> discourse tradition). As I recall a few popes have actually
>>>>>> condemned Latin American bishops for being too leftist. So they
>>>>>> must have been getting something right. :-)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Nonetheless, the fear is that we might lend credibility to
>>>>>> oppressive discourses by speaking partly within their discursive
>>>>>> worlds. That is probably a justifiable concern, given Bakhtin's
>>>>>> close linkage in the notion of heteroglossia (diversity of
>>>>>> discursive worlds, or "social voices") of ways of describing the
>>>>>> world and ways of valuing it. But to my mind communication is
>>>>>> not about conversion, nor indeed even about being right. It is
>>>>>> about establishing new cross-difference discourses that produce
>>>>>> surprising ideas and values. I have always thought that there
>>>>>> was rather too much missionary spirit in leftist discourse, that
>>>>>> it remained uncomfortably close to christian messianic and
>>>>>> evangelical models. The problem with this being that it assumes
>>>>>> an end to history, that answers are known, and so there is no
>>>>>> real incentive for a dialogue in which one is open to learn with
>>>>>> one's interlocutors.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> So, yes, there is risk, but there is also much to gain.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> BTW, is there a good history of "critical thinking"? someone
>>>>>> must believe it was invented in the Englightenment, or in the
>>>>>> Renaissance, or by the 400 BC Greeks, by the Jews (when?), by
>>>>>> the Chinese (when?). If we are going to claim that Jesus or
>>>>>> Buddha exemplified critical thinking, are we also going to
>>>>>> believe it's true?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> JAY.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Jay Lemke
>>>>>> Professor (Adjunct, 2009-2010)
>>>>>> Educational Studies
>>>>>> University of Michigan
>>>>>> Ann Arbor, MI 48109
>>>>>> www.umich.edu/~jaylemke <http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke>
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Visiting Scholar
>>>>>> Laboratory for Comparative Human Communication
>>>>>> University of California -- San Diego
>>>>>> La Jolla, CA
>>>>>> USA 92093
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> xmca mailing list
>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>> 
>>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> xmca mailing list
>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> 
> -- 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Hegel Summer School
> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/seminars/hss10.htm
> Hegel, Goethe and the Planet: 13 February 2010.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> 
> 

_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca