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California State University, Dominguez Hills
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Created: March 15, 2004
Latest Update: March 15, 2004
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Naked Space: A Visual Tool for Bridging the Gap Between the Academy and the Community

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, March 2004.
"Fair use" encouraged.

1. Proposal submitted by

   Jeanne Curran, Ph.D., Esq.
   jeannecurran@habermas.org
   Professor Emeritus
   Department of Sociology
   California State University, Dominguez Hills

   Mail to: 7020 Senalda Rd.
   Los Angeles, Calif. 90068

   and Susan R. Takata, Ph.D.
   takata@uwp.edu
   Chair, Criminal Justice Department
   Molinaro 362, University of Wisconsin-Parkside
   Telephone: (262) 595-3416
   

2. Title of Proposed Session: Naked Space: A Tool for Bridging the Gap Between the Academy and the Community

3. This model workshop offers exhibits including photography, video, art, and performance as stimuli for public discourse on major social issues . The exhibit title, Naked Space, was chosen to reflect art theory such as Deleuze's explanation of Francis Bacon's attempt to capture pure sensation and Bakhtin's answerability. Our premise is that the visual enhances human ability to communicate, especially to communicate the spiritual and sensual that often defy articulation in traditional discourse. We engage those who have created the visual projects together with those who visit the exhibit, students, parents, children, friends, and community members in sharing public discourse on the major issues adddressed in the projects exhibited. The workshop offers a sample of the exhibit, exactly as it has been offered at our schools over the last year.

4. Presentation format: We would like to actually set up the workshop as we have done the exhibit locally. That would include a small gallery display of projects and a discussion circle. We have become adept at hanging and setting up exhibits without tacking anything to the walls.

   Perhaps there would be also some format in which we could actually present the model more formally. But our preference is for the actual interactive workshop and gallery set up.

5. We traditionally have a series of PowerPoint presentations (visual, both art, photography as art, and photographs) that require a computer and screen for projection. We also prefer to have access to our website, if possible, which would require Internet access, and without which we can survive, and have done so. We will need tables and easels (which we have, the easels, that is, if necessary) to arrange the visual materials.

6. Presentation Summary:

   The exhibit-discussion we are asking to present is the format we have found to work most effectively in guiding our sociology undergraduates and graduates to tackle advanced theory on how humans might live together in peace through a system of law (Habermas), how individuals and their communities interact and reinvent themselves (Bakhtin), and on the need to relearn how to listen to and hear the Other, and why we must do that (Maria Pia Lara).

   Habermas focuses on reason, and the importance of public discourse to governance and legitimacy for all the citizens of any society. But reason is not always an option. Affect often gets in the way. And then there is the matter of special interest groups and cultural conflict.

   Bakhtin, instead of asking the legal question of how we shall live together, asks instead, if the Other can answer, then what shall I say, for the Other's answer is there before me. (Greg Neilsen on the Norms of Answerability) We presume that every human has the gift of answerability, but that the skills and means to answer are often beyond access.

   Maria Pia Lara focuses on illocutionary discourse, our need to communicate who we are, as feeling humans, and to hear the Other in good faith. We emphasize here that we are not required to agree with the Other, but to make a good faith effort to understand his validity claim and how he/she came to that position.

   Our present exhibit focuses on alterity, illocutionary understanding, and legitimate governance in our social groups and institutions. The exhibits are designed to make theoretical concepts more accessible to those who have not studied theory in depth, and to encourage them to recognize that they do have answers that need expression for their own benefit as well as those of the whole community. Most recently we have begun to emphasize the tendency most of us have to discount passivity as not contributing, and see activity, visual and vocal presence, as preferable leadership. So we have begun to include discussions of interpassivity and interactivity.

   The projects in the exhibit focus on very specific social issues, such as the one that led to our title last fall: the profusion of naked lady mud flaps which many of us found insulting, and a student newsletter's choice of the naked lady mud flap icon as a logo. Both the newsletter, and numerous visual responses, including a copy of a painting in the Saatchi exhibit, were included in our Fall Exhibit. And we came upon the title Naked Space in considering our respective reactions to how to handle the emotions spewed up.

   We are using visual sociology less to describe than to stimulate freer and more in-depth discussion in teaching, and in bringing that teaching into the community and the community onto campus. But we are also using the projects and their exhibition to discover newer and more adequate ways of measuring learning than traditional paper and pencil tests. One measure of success for this approach was our school's selection of the Exhibit last Fall as an event to which our alumni might be tempted to return.

   The objectives we'd like to share:

   1. art, drawing, painting, sculpture as a viable inclusion in visual sociology
   2. theoretical ties between sociological theory and art theory
   3. the visual as a measure of learning
   4. methodologies for analyzing the photo work within the social theory framework we are using.