[iDC] IPF09 Conference thoughts

John Hopkins chazhop at gmail.com
Thu Dec 10 18:44:33 UTC 2009


Kevin -

> Toward the end of acknowledging the need for reflexivity in these
> critiques, I should add that where I perceive my students as locked into
> a cybernetic sensorium, I don't see a way out that doesn't also require
> a great deal from me. Instructors will have to perform/adopt new views
> as well, and risk living by different rituals than those which write the
> limited subjectivities we fight. In the current economic climate, where
> more is already expected of those of us with jobs, and less jobs are
> available for those of us without, risk sounds like a tall order, I must
> admit.

But all else is buffoonery, a shadow of authentic be-ing.  Accepting the line 
drawn by cash and social stability is how the collapse and failure of the 
creative proceeds: it is a primary line which the market-driven society has 
drawn deeply in the embodied be-ing of its ever-more-bound participants.  To 
proceed through that abstract boundary as though it does not exist is completely 
necessary for transformative change.  There is no excuse.  To allow it to frame 
(as an expression of power in) the learning encounter is morally and sensually 
corrupt and degrades that encounter into an exercise of social propaganda that 
dooms both "the teacher" and "the student" to the limited POV of the screen 
(among other creatively fatal fates)...

What you give up as a *respectable member of society* has no value in the 
process of reaching what you seek: the strength of autonomy to create a *way to 
go* in life.

This is the same fear that throttles most hopes for any behavioral change 
regarding the wholesale alterations that humans are inflicting on an environment 
  _which is itself changing_ ... perhaps the human species is self-destructive 
and willing to thrust itself into biological irrelevance as life projects itself 
forward on the planet.

etc.

jh



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