Author Archives: Austin Bailey

Private Vs. Public Space and the Book

I like what Stauffer says about books being artifacts of private and public history, exchange, and encounter. In particular, I find the question of private and public space, as they relate to the book-as-artifact, very interesting.

For example, Stauffer mentions, in the Atlantic article, a women who wrote a eulogy for her daughter in an edition of Felicia Hemans’ poems:

“Stauffer gives a poignant example. A woman named Ellen received a book by the sentimental poet Felicia Hemans. Years later, her seven-year-old daughter died, and she adapted lines from Hemans to create a memorial inside the book. Mary, Mary, Mary.”

For me, an interesting question this brings up is: To what extent could we consider this a private act of mourning, considering that it was written in the pages of a book, a publicly inflected item? Moreover, what expressions of grief are allowed in the space of the book that are perhaps disallowed elsewhere, if we take the 19th century’s strictures on mourning into account? Is the sentimental book a vehicle for a private-public hybridization of mourning that would not be possible in other spaces and contexts? If so, the book-as-space-for-mourning serves social functions that we have yet to fully ascertain.

Reflections on Book Traces

 

My Copy of Jean Valentine’s Dream Barker

I especially enjoyed Professor Stauffer’s article and there some interesting points and intersections I’d like to mention in relation to it. I don’t own many old books but a few years back I purchased this book:

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It’s a first edition of Dream Barker by Jean Valentine, published by Yale University Press, 1965. Jean won the prestigious yale younger poets award for her first collection, which was selected by Dudley Fitts, a then poet and translator of Greek. (For those who are unfamiliar with her work, Jean is still writing. Her 2010 collection Break the Glass was nominated for the Pulitzer prize and she was the New York State poet laureate from 2008-2010.) On the inside flap there are two hand-written texts, one from Jean and one presumably from whomever sold it to the Strand’s rare book collection where I purchased it:

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I went to a reading and a book signing for Jean’s 2010 Break the Glass and I presented this book to her. Turns out Harvey, who was indeed her editor back then, had passed away some years ago and whomever had this book had passed it along, either to the Strand or to a third party. Jean was nice enough to sign the book again for me on another page:

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This whole thing was interesting to me. This person whom Jean Valentine had never met (me) now had this personal record of her past. At the same time, this object from the past had now been appropriated to the present via Jean’s inscription to me on the proceeding title page.

When I purchased this book, I did so despite already owning the same text in another form. I wanted to own an original print edition, and I love how 1960s it is. The aesthetic design of the whole book is unmistakably marked by the decade and region from whence it came. These aspects are inseparable from the text itself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Transcendentalists in the Archive

By: Austin Bailey

20141126_144657

My Reading Desk.

For this assignment I made use of Michael’s wonderful suggestion to check out Archive Grid: http://beta.worldcat.org/archivegrid/. I found this to be surprisingly easy to use and quite helpful. You type in search criteria and it pulls up a list of libraries that carry matching items. This led me to the Morgan Library. My search criteria was “Ralph Waldo Emerson.” It turns out the Detroit Public Library has most of his papers and there are other items scattered across New England and California. However, I found two items of interest at the Morgan Library: a collection of newspaper and journal clippings relating to the transcendentalists and hand written notes from a 1859 speech Emerson delivered on behalf of John Brown. This speech was delivered on November 18th, roughly a month before John Brown was hung for treason.  Below is a photograph.

20141126_152642Emerson crosses out “Wordsworth.”

I thought this was neat because it’s the word “Wordsworth” written then crossed out. It seemed to have resonance by itself, floating atop the page and seemingly separate from the rest of the text. It reminded me of a comment I read recently in Harold Bloom’s 2012 Anatomy of Influence: “A great poet in prose, and a very good one in verse, [Emerson] invested himself in his journals, lectures, and essays because Wordsworth’s giant form blocked the New England seer from achieving a full voice in verse” (209). It’s interesting to think in terms of how the archive can inform and dialogue with our preestablished critical frameworks. Putting this next to Bloom’s assertion, for example–an assertion that seems generally true, so in a sense hard to assess–we can think about how process works in the making of a text. This would suggest a different way of thinking about influence, seeing it as more palimpsestic and usable rather than anxious and oppositional. (I don’t particularly buy what Bloom is saying anyway. Emerson wasn’t the best poet because he sounded too Victorian despite his desire not to. This wasn’t due so much to an anxiety of influence as it was to his inability to get his pitch right in verse. He knew this himself and remarked once that his voice was a “husky” one, better suited to prose.)

I was kind of surprised by how formal the archive was. It was like meeting a celebrity or going through airport security (though much more aesthetically pleasing). Catherine mentioned the Morgan Library’s archive system in her post but I’ll iterate my own version here. You can’t get to the Morgan Library’s reading room directly; you have to be escorted there. A nice man with a pony tail helped me get my visitor’s pass and took me upstairs to it.

When you get to the reading room you are instructed to put your personal items in a storage locker and to wash your hands. You present your ID to the archivist behind the glass. Then they let you in. It’s all very procedural. They instruct you to read through a list of rules and handling instructions. While you’re doing this they prepare the requested materials for you. In my case, these were newspaper clippings in a bound book, one that I could touch freely as they were simply xerox copies. But the other item I requested–the hand-written Emerson speech–was in a bound book placed on a kind of reading dais (I’m not sure what the exact term for it is but it’s essentially a wooden book holder). For these types of items you’re allowed to move the pages (carefully of course) but you are instructed not to reposition the book in any way. Below is a photo of the entrance which I surreptitiously snapped.

20141126_143345Entrance to the Reading Room

There was one other person doing research. He was photographing some series of illuminated manuscripts. There was an odd moment when one of the archive curators said to the other one: “Want me to move this stack of books so you can see him better?” referring to the researcher who was observing the illuminated manuscripts. The researcher then cheekily responded: “You can’t see me Marie?” with a smile. He and the archivist knew each other well enough to be on a first-name basis (at least in his mind) yet the curator was talking audibly about surveiling him. The whole scenario seemed oddly interesting.

As cliche as it may sound, there was something wonderful about being in the presence of all that literary historical material. I have no investment in manuscript studies per se, but I found myself wanting to trade with the guy next to me–his materials for mine–just so I could have a different viewing experience. Part of what was so alluring about Emerson’s script was that it looked like something someone could’ve written yesterday, as it was only black ink scribbled on blue-lined legal paper. It made me recall our conversation with Steve Jones and what he said about the delicacy of more recent textual materials, since they were printed on cheap, acidic paper.

20141126_151702Sketch of Henry David Thoreau, from the transcendentalist notebook.

I think being in the presence of the archive had an impact on me in two key ways: 1) it opened me up to an area of scholarship which I have heard a lot about but have not had any direct experience with, that being archive work in general, and 2) it made me aware of one of the salient values of the archive, which is to put the scholar in contact with the corporal presence of the text in its initial makings. This generates a new-found sense of a text being something that is made. It puts one in touch with the materiality of thinking and its affective forces. While none of the materials I found are directly relevant to what I’m working on now, I did snap some photos of some important journal clippings. These journal clippings presented in aggregate a record of Emersonian critical reception in the last years of his life and right after. Interestingly, what they reveal is that a lot of the conversations talking place within academe in the late 19th century concerning the meaning of Emerson’s work are surprisingly similar to one’s taking place now. Of course, certain elements of the 19the century conversation are dated and very different; still, there are skeletal similarities in the ways these late 19th century American and European literary critics themetized his oeuvre. I have made note of these things as they will come in handy in the future.

 

 

Annotated Bibliography: American Pragmatism and Aesthetics

By: Austin Bailey

Annotated Bibliography

My current project is for my seminar on American pragmatism and aesthetics with Joan Richardson. Though it’s “just” a seminar paper, I’d like to expand it into an article if I end up liking it.

My essay (which has yet to find a title) looks at Emerson’s essays on social reform within the context of the emerging industrial-capitalist nexus of the 19th century. As industrializiation occurred, the country and international markets went from agrarian based economies to more internationally trade-based, “itinerant” economies. This included an increase in paper currency and speculation as well as a ramping-up of slavery. These changes in the economic structures of society resonated in America, often in the form of deep anxieties about the current state of things and the future. The image and metaphor of the “paper men,” “ghosts,” and other specters of commerce became prevalent. These metaphors signaled a newly emergent form of personhood and economy based on rootlessness and invisibility. My essay argues that Emerson responded to these anxieties by advocating, through his transcendentalism, a more direct series of relations between individuals. While Emerson was obsessed with the idea of empowering the individual, he did not advocate intellectual hermeticism or aesthetic retreats from encroaching capitalist oppression. He instead believed that individuals should face each other. Facing one another has many resonances. I will focus on Stanley Cavell’s idea of condition as “condiction,” that is, our condition of speaking together. If our words are always already delimiting–putting us, as Cavell has suggested, into pre-arrangements and pre-agreements of our person, what Emerson calls “conformity”–they are also all we have. While Emerson advocates a materialist critique on the level of forming more direct relations and, in the Marxist sense, dereification, through an awareness of use value over and against exchange value and market fetish, he also advocates for an endless revisionism within democratic circles of conversation. This requires facing one another and speaking directly to one another–in other words, a kind of “reformist perfectionism.”

David Greenham. “The Skeptical Deduction: Reading Kant and Cavell in Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”.” ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 1.3 (2007): 253-281. Project MUSE. Web. 3 Nov. 2014. <http://muse.jhu.edu/>.

Greenham has recently published a book on Emerson, Emerson’s Transatlantic Romanticism. It is an exploration of Emerson’s relationship and indebtedness to the British romantics but it brings in interesting cross sections of influence such as Mary Moody Emerson. It also places Emerson’s romanticism in dialogue with Stanley Cavell (currently a philosopher at Harvard and one of Emerson’s most influential contemporary readers) and Immanuel Kant. This article eventuated in one of the book’s chapters. While I didn’t take much interest in the book, I find this article to be extremely useful for my purposes. Greenham does the work no one else wants to do: he actually walks us through Kantian Transcendental Deduction and categories, showing how they relate to Stanley Cavell’s claim that Emerson ups Kant by suggesting that every word in our diction be placed under skeptical deduction. This is a very confusing concept and Greenham illuminates it very well. It will be central for my argument because I will talk about how Emerson goes beyond proto-Marxist structural critique, suggesting that our language be put under intense scrutiny as we face each other in conversation.

Naoko Saito. “Perfectionism and the Love of Humanity: Democracy as a Way of Life after Dewey, Thoreau, and Cavell.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 20.2 (2006) 93-105.

Not entirely sure if I’ll use this article but I loved it. It gave me the idea for thinking about conversation as endemic to Cavell and the transcendentalist aesthetic. This article talks a lot about Dewey. I don’t know if I’m going to bring Dewey into my paper, more than just a quick mention or two, but I may bring Saito’s article in for a guest appearance. I often look at articles for what they can teach me about approach on a structural level. When I was torturing myself over how I was going to talk about Emerson’s material-structural critique as well as his emphasis on individual and communal perfectionism–the two seemed so opposite to one another–I took a cue from this article’s combinatory approach. To sum up, it argues that through Cavell’s reading of Thoreau we can uncover an understanding of democracy as a way of life, which relates to Dewey, who posited democracy a way of life, as an ethics in our everyday conduct.

David Anthony. “Gone Distracted”: “Sleepy Hollow,” Gothic Masculinity, and the Panic of 1819. Early American Literature, vol. 40, number 1, 2005, p.111-144.

This article looks at the emergence of paper currencies, speculation, and the market panic of 1819. It draws connections to a crisis of masculinity represented in Washington Irving’s famous tale, “Sleepy Hollow.” This article is useful in terms of historical background, but it also shows how anxieties about industrial capitalist economy made their way into aesthetic practices. Emerson, a few decades later, dealt with a similar crisis in the panic of 1837, an event that informed his Phi Beta Kappa address, “The American Scholar.”

Capitalism Takes Command: The Social Transformation of Nineteenth Century America. Ed. Michael Zakim and Gary J. Kornblith. University of Chicago Press. 2012.

A collection of essays, this anthology looks at new perspectives on the emergence of industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century and how it affected slavery, the family, and American culture and sensibility. It comes on the heels of what historians in the late 90s/early 00s deemed “the second slavery”–slavery’s adaption to industrial market practices. While slavery has traditionally been understood by historians to be a hold-over from agrarian forms of 17th and 18th century capitalism, second slavery as a general historical recovery shows how slavery and industrial capitalism were mutually constitutive. These essays take this conversation further by exploring microhistories ,like that of a businessman and his son during the panic of 1837, showing how the economy went through a kind of bubble burst akin to the 08 bubble burst and tying this bubble bursting to slavery. It will be useful primarily as background and set up.

Emerson, philosophe transcendantaliste ou pragmatiste?” Gérard Deledalle.
Revue française d’études américaines, No. 91, Ralph Waldo Emerson: l’autorité du scepticisme (FÉVRIER 2002), pp. 80-86

I’m not sure if I’ll use this article for anything but it questions whether or not Emerson should
be understood as a transcendentalist or a pragmatist. The article argues that two traditions in
Emerson studies have emerged: the transcendentalist (the author curiously links this to
Wittgenstein) and the pragmatist (through James and Dewey).

“Pragmatismus, Dekonstruktion, ironischer Eklektizismus Richard Rortys Heidegger-Lektüre.” Philipp Burkard Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, Bd. 51, H. 2 (Apr. – Jun., 1997), pp.268-284

This article is really interesting and makes me wish I read German. It examines pragmatism as it
relates to deconstruction through a lecture on Heidegger given by Richard Rorty. I’ve been
somewhat interested in the ways pragmatism can be put into dialogue with post structuralism.

Stanley Cavell. Emerson’s Transcendental Etudes. Stanford University Press. 2003.

This book is a collection of Cavell’s essays and lectures on Emerson. It’s generally a go-to book.
The essay I’ll be looking at is called “Emerson’s Constitutional Amending.” It argues that
Emerson’s essay “Fate” suggests that our “fate” is our diction. We are trapped in the
pre-formed agreements of language. In conversing with one another, then, we must apply
skepticism to our words in order to reaffirm their vitality as our only way of knowing one
another, darkly. I will use this essay to think through Emersonian reformist perfectionism.
Emerson asserts the need to face one another and speak in a way that puts our words under
tremendous scrutiny. As such, we come to know one another despite the socio-economic
forces that alienate ourselves from ourselves and from each other. What I will argue is that
Emerson suggests that this interpolated conversing and facing must happen in addition to
or despite any broader structural critiques. Ultimately, Emerson is not a systematizer but a
suggester. He does not tell us what we must do, only what we must start to do.

Stanley Cavell. The Senses of Walden. The University of Chicago Press. 1992.

This book I am only beginning to read but it’s where Cavell began his work on the
transcendentalists. (The book was originally published in 1972 by Viking Press). I think this book
may be relevant for my argument in the way that it talks about conversation and our use of
language. Also, Thoreau talks a lot about facing one another and staring into another’s eyes.
I may bring Thoreau’s Walden into the conversation, particularly the passage where Thoreau
talks about mutual gazing. How prominent these texts will be in my discussion remains open.
I’m excited to dip into this book. With Stanley Cavell it’s never a bad time. (Many would
disagree!)

The Other Emerson. Ed. Branka Arsic and Carey Wolfe. University of Minnesota Press. 2010.

There is simply no more important collection of essays on Emerson in the last ten years.  The
aim of this collection is to reevaluate Emerson as a philosopher, marking a major
philosophic turn in Emerson studies that is just now, in my view, coming into maturation. I will
probably use or reference an essay in here by Eric Keenaghen called “Reading Emerson, in
Other Times: On a Politics of Solitude and an Ethics of Risk.” Keenaghen talks about “The
American Scholar” as a text that begins by addressing man’s ontological alienation within
market forces. Keenaghen, however, skips over talking about Emerson’s structural critiques
and talks more about citizenship through reading practices. While Keenaghen begins an
important “intervention”—that being a reevaluation of Emerson’s materialist thinking—I believe
he stops short of a necessary exploration of Emerson’s philosophical resistance to market
forces. I’m not sure to what extent this article will play a role in my project.

The Emerson Dilemma: Essays on Emerson and Social Reform. Ed. T. Gregory Garvey. University of Georgia Press. 2001.

These essays on Emerson and social reform are invaluable. T. Gregory Garvey’s introduction
sets the stage nicely, providing a comprehensive look at the salient themes of Emerson cum
social reformer. My argument assumes that Emerson was a social reformer, albeit in his own
way, that is, through lecturing and through political alliances as a public intellectual. This has
been the trend of recent scholarship and the view of Emerson as detached from social reform
has generally fallen by the wayside. This book will be useful more so for set-up and background
material. It will probably make its way into a few footnotes.

 

 

 

State of the Field

By: Austin Bailey

My interests/sub-fields are American pragmatism, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and 19th century American literature. While there are many journals that publish articles on and in all three of these subjects, there are a couple that are particularly prominent for merging all three of these categories:

1) The Pluralist. Here is a partial description of the journal’s aims:

“The journal upholds the Socratic dictum of self-knowledge and the love of wisdom as the purpose of philosophy. It seeks to express philosophical insights and concerns humanely and with an eye to literary as well as philosophical excellence, but technical papers are welcome. The Pluralist is a forum for discussion of diverse philosophical standpoints and pluralism’s merits. The Pluralist considers high-quality submissions on any philosophical topic written from any philosophical perspective. Articles that defend some type of pluralism, apply a pluralistic perspective to contemporary issues, or take a critical stance against pluralism are encouraged.”

The Pluralist mostly publishes articles on William James, John Dewey, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Sander Peirce, as well as contemporary cultural studies.

2) ESQ: Journal of the American Renaissance. Here is a description:

“ESQ is devoted to the study of nineteenth-century American literature. We invite submission of original articles, welcome work grounded in a wide range of theoretical and critical perspectives, and encourage inquiries proposing submissions and projects. A special feature is the publication of essays reviewing groups of related books on figures and topics in the field, thereby providing a forum for viewing recent scholarship in broad perspectives.”

ESQ is the “big kahuna” as far as I can see. They publish a lot of prominent scholars and the work featured is always super interesting.

3) Philosophy and Literature. Here is a description:

“For more than thirty years, Philosophy and Literature has explored the dialogue between literary and philosophical studies. The journal offers fresh, stimulating ideas in the aesthetics of literature, theory of criticism, philosophical interpretation of literature, and literary treatment of philosophy. Philosophy and Literature challenges the cant and pretensions of academic priesthoods through its assortment of lively, wide-ranging essays, notes, and reviews that are written in clear, jargon-free prose.”

Looking at their most recent edition, they have topics ranging from Freud and Philology to Richard Rorty and Jonathan Franzen. But they publish a lot of articles related to pragmatism and William James, as well as Emerson.

4) Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Here is a description:

“The Journal of Speculative Philosophy publishes systematic and interpretive essays about basic philosophical questions. Scholars examine the constructive interaction between Continental and American philosophy, as well as novel developments in the ideas and theories of past philosophers that have relevance for contemporary thinkers. The journal also features discussions of art, religion, and literature that are not strictly or narrowly philosophical. Book reviews are included in each issue.”

Three Recent Books

Pragmatism and American Experience by Joan Richardson (who teaches at the Grad Center)

Emerson’s Transatlantic Romanticism by David Greenham.

Capitalism Takes Command: The Social Transformation of Nineteenth Century America Ed. by Michael Zakim and Gary J. Kornblith.

Conferences

The American Literature Association has a big annual conference that includes panels, presentations, and calls for papers on a wide range of subjects within American Literature.

Conference site

The Thoreau Society’s Annual Gathering. The Thoreau society holds conference presentations and panels every July in Concord, MA.

MLA.

The American Studies Association.

There’s also the ACLA.

University Press Series

Oxford University Press keeps coming up again and again for works in my sub-field. For examine, James M. Albrecht’s Reconstructing Individualism: A Pragmatic Tradition from Emerson to Ellison, which was published in 2012 under Fordham University Press, which I believe is operating as a subsidiary.

Here is a fascinating wiki page where authors share their experiences with these academic presses: http://humanitiesjournals.wikia.com/wiki/University_Presses_/Academic_Publishers

Cambridge, of course, does a great Companion series to major authors, but I think they mostly only select scholars with a lot of publications and prestigious positions. At least that’s what I’ve seen in their Companion series. Cambridge also has a series in American Literature and Culture.

Speaker Series

Various events at the Grad Center, especially American Studies Events.

Here is the website for the events series through NYU’s English department

New York Historical Society

The Times Center

92nd Street Y.

Scholarly Blogs

Here is a blog maintained by Brenda Winneaple called “The American Scholar.” She seems to be writing mostly about nineteenth century American Literature.

“The American Scholar”–which I am just now hearing of–seems to be an e-zine on American Literature and culture, both historical and contemporary.

Christopher Newfield is a nineteenth century Americanist and blogs about education:

http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/

This is an awesome blog by an Emersonist and Transcendentalism scholar who is into Digital pedagogies: http://luminousallusion.wordpress.com/

Scholars’ Twitter Pages

David S. Reynolds https://twitter.com/reysn1

Russel Sbriglia https://twitter.com/rsbrigs

Eric Lott https://twitter.com/EricLott2

Institutions’ Twitter Pages

English PhD Program: https://twitter.com/CUNYenglish

Project Muse: https://twitter.com/search?q=Project%20Muse&src=typd

CUNY adjunct project: https://twitter.com/CUNYadjuncts

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Response to Michael’s and Sarah’s posts

I originally planned to write something more isolated, but after reading Michael’s and Sarah’s blog posts I want to respond to some of the questions and points they raised in theirs, as I think they are germane to some of the things I’ve been thinking about in regards to this week’s readings.

I too was very taken with Pedagogy of the Oppressed, particularly because it conceives of liberatory education as a dialogical exchange which fundamentally recognizes the reality that oppressive ideologies are always already embedded in ontology (in our experiences and in our unconscious participation in symbolic networks), and that liberatory democratic projects necessitate cooperative, diaglogical frameworks that work towards (and make explicit their working towards) practical and local transformations. In fact (and I’m sure this is due to my own research interests/biases) I found a surprising amount of overlap between Freiere’s pedagogy and pragmatism broadly, even Jamesian and Deweyian pragmatism specifically, despite Freire’s neo-Marxist approach. I think there is a productive way to put Freiere in conversation with some of the digital humanist stuff we read this week and I will circle back to that later. Michael brought a really interesting question, so I will reproduce it here:

“My first question is: how do we as CUNY teachers help people realize that they are oppressed? I know that sounds very nasty. No one wants to realize he is oppressed. I’m sure it is very painful to learn. But, if I understand Freire correctly, in order to change the existing order of oppressors and oppressed then the oppressed need to realize their oppression. After all, how can we change something if we’re not aware of it?”

Michael also added this observant and very funny point/question as well:

“I believe […] telling the students “You’re oppressed” would be prescriptive, and not very good for anyone. It would be no different from the banking model of education: dumping information into docile students’ heads. But how does a person in authority (who, in my case, happens to be white, straight, male, if not Catholic then the son of lapsed Catholics, and bearded, which I understand is often unconsciously registered a symbol of authority, albeit a very stylish symbol) begin the process of addressing oppression in class?”

To me, Michael’s questions suggest two things: 1) How do we handle the personalization of oppression that Freire’s pedagogy seems to imply? In other words, how do we as teachers handle emotion in the classroom, trying not to dispel it but trying also not to allow it to over-influence the mood of the classroom? and 2) How do white male teachers, inherently in a position of political and social privilege, talk about the reality of oppression in a way that doesn’t amount to white “man-splaining.”

There is of course no definitive answer for this question, but I will share what I’ve done in the classroom and tie it into what Freire says about doing what he calls “The Word.”

In my classroom experience, I assume a degree of agreement between me and the students to some of the realities of oppression. That being said, I invite students to air out their objections, confusions, and disagreements with anything that’s being said and/or assumed as experientially evident. This allows for a fluid exchange that recognizes basic realities we collectively inhabit. I believe this is similar to what Freire talks about in Chapter 3, the dialogue chapter. On the subject of doing what he calls “The Word,” Friere says: “dialogue cannot occur between those who want to name the world and those who do not wish this naming–between those who deny others the right to speak their world and those whose right to speak has been denied to them” (88). This is because open and productive dialogue is necessitated by “the encounter between [people], mediated by the world” (88). “Naming” implies an active process, whereby interlocutors try out descriptions of experience in order to better improve the collective episteme, but not to come to any final conclusions. Hence, it is always processual and collaborative. “Mediated through the world” has two meanings. One, it implies that this dialogue is historical and situated within concrete relations and experiences, and two, that our knowledge of one another is always colored by the constitutive discourses we inhabit and that inhabit us.

So, what does this mean in terms of Michael’s question? Well, one thing I would offer from my point of view is that the idea of oppression, as personal as it may be at certain times, is also concretely observable, or can be. Thus, it need not be highly personalized in the classroom. If a student wants to bring his or her own experience into the discussion that’s fine, but generally these issues, while having personal effects, go beyond the personal.

Friere’s approach is situated within praxis, that is, mutual contemplation between student and teacher and student and student. This is what Freire means when he talks about humility within the dialogic process, as well as producing objects of contemplation that mediate student-teacher relationships (again, ch. 3). As I said before, this strikes me as a very pragmatistic enterprise in that it engages collaborative processes which foreground humility and limitation.