Dear Sir,
Thank you for your kind and immediate response to my request that my students in social theory and social justice be permitted to write for discussions. The request is part of our program in teaching both illocutionary discourse and the public sphere governance discourse, both of which are the primary means of keeping our citizens informed and involved in their own governance process.
Our program higlights these two components of civic dialogue because they fit well with the topics and issues that come up in our classes of peace and social justice, and because they are suited to a pedagogical curriculum that insists that education is a performative act in which all participants are interdependent, meaning that they construct in the process their own learning. Such a performative act would seem to fit the needs that Jurgen Habermas describes as requisite to a legitimate democracy ruled by a system of law.
That's the social theory we are guided by. But our emphasis, at the undergraduate university level, particularly at a commuter campus with middling academic standing, is on praxis, on guiding our students to actually engage in illocutionary discussions designed to help us all understand the Other (teacher or student or community member) in our midst, and hence to take a step closer to developing the skills that make the poor (and the non-poor, for that matter) real to us, since in many instances, some of us are the poor, some of us are the non-poor. In the illocutionary phase of our work we are very clear about the fact that listening in good faith to the Other does not mean agreeing with the Other; it means trying to put ourselves in the Others' shoes, trying to understand their definition of the situation, trying to see a different perspective of the issues at hand. We tend to base our initial understanding on narratives of actual life experiences. Through knowing one another, through their stories of their experience, we come to know them more effectively as humans, not as numbers of poor, or of middle class, or of rich, or of radical, or of reactionary.
And in the process of listening to each other in good faith, we come to find our similarities, we discover that we "know" each other, and students respond contentedly "I have been heard." Our goal is that each can be heard,in the classroom, in the community, and take the self esteem of personhood that confers into further substantive discussions on governance issues. For the substantive discussions, we teach simple argumentation derived from my teaching of law: facts - law - application - conclusion; facts - law -application - conclusion. We challenge the students for drawing conclusions with no supportive facts. We offer them theories in the place of law. And we guide them to base their arguments on evidence whose sources they must cite, so that we can each decide on how much weight to attach to the conclusions drawn.
What prompted me to write you about your lecture, “Can a Market Economy Serve the Poor?”, was it's salience to issues we were discussing at the time. And before I could get to a teaching essay, one of the students responded with passion. I'd like to go back now (I just returned from the American Society of Criminology meetings in Chicago where I objected to the way that "crime" is everywhere and so poorly defined with justice in mind.) What I would like to do is walk my students back through illocutionary discourse, which Mandy definitely skipped in The Church and Poverty. And with them having come to understand a little better the illocutionary phase of the discussion, I'd like them to really be able to share with us their very real questions on these issues.
Now, I've tried this before and failed. That doesn't mean I've quit trying. Sometimes our students are shy, quiety, intimidated. Granting permission to talk and be heard doesn't cut it on its own. Illocutionary discourse is something we have to teach in praxis. But it's lifetime learning. Once they have learned to join in the performative act of discourse it's theirs for life. Since classes end in less than two weeks, this time, I'll have enough time to work closely with them and encourage them to talk to you and others about their concern for the poor. And within a month or so, we hope to try this in a relatively large local community, under the auspices of the church.
I realize that social theory is a tad out of your league. But public sphere dialogue is something we all teach, and something on which we all depend for the future of the democratic governance we dream of. We've discovered that most professionals with an ardent interest in social justice have much to add to any of these discussions. We figure just having the discussions is important in and of itself.
For your convenience, I've added here the section of our weekly issue that included the material on your lecture. Please forgive our manners when we forget. We are learning.
- War and the Killing of Our Sons. Link added November 7, 2002.
- DOING SOMETHING about War Link added November 9, 2002.
- Now, How should I live, knowing all this about the war? Link added November 9, 2002.
- Beverly Hills and the Day of the Dead Same issue comes up as with how do I live knowing about the war politics all over the globe. Here, Irma is asking " How should I live, when my acceptance of our customs and traditions is different from that of many I know? Always this is the question in some form: How do we manage individual difference, creative and soul-satisfying venture into the creative, the caring, the innovative, when we are so bound by normative traditions and expectations?
- Poverty in a Market Society - Are We Complicit in Its Denial? Link added November 10, 2002.
- Poverty, Complicity, Exploitation Colonial Studies were based on colonial wars, folks. Withoout poverty and exploitation, there would be no one willing to accept the conditions slavery imposes. This brings in the micro that must be considered interdependently with the macro. The Bishop's 19 page lecture takes this one to an advanced level of theory. Link added November 11, 2002.
- Coping with Acknowledgment: What Do I Do When I Love Him Anyway? War in the private sphere front. This kind hurts worse; for this kind is interpersonal. Nowhere to escape to the not-personal. This is one of those deep questions about how can it be true and not-true all at once; how can I love that which harms me? what is love? Link fixed on November 10, 2002.
A Justice Site
jeannecurran@habermas.org
Capitalism and Poverty