WWW www.habermas.org

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: October 28, 2005
Latest Update: November 1, 2005
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Topic of the Week:

The Art of Engagement

will i still be me?

The intensity that Brenda was feeling last week in trying to make me understand that I needed to understand a given interpretation of the Bible, led me to wonder about why it mattered whether I understood or not. Today I tried to explain that, and I'd like to summarize it for you.

Brenda's admonition was that I did not properly understand Proverbs. Undoubtedly she was right on that score. Bible reading is not part of Catholic training; nor is it part of rabbinical studies, or at least the courses that I pursued. But my affirmation and feelings were very strong that an understanding of Proverbs, from any perspective was not the issue. For me, the issue was my willingness and good faith in listening to Brenda's feelings as an Other. We have reached tentative understandings throughout the class, and also reached tentative impasses. I wanted to accept Brenda as Brenda, not as someone who interpreted Proverbs in any given way.

My concern was that if I am told that some interpretation is the "right one," my instinctive response is to deny that there is any "right" interpretation, as Lyotard would have denied that there is any one metanarrative. I must seek to understand for myself, or I will not be me. That means that I am equally unwilling to accept anyone's interpretation of the Koran as the "right one." I simply do not accept anyone's insistence that I think in any certain way. To accept such insistence would be to silence me, to deny my answerability, to constrain my creativity. And I have been focused in the last week or so, in connection with a professional listserv to which I belong, on how it is possible to teach, interactively and deeply, without imposing my creativity, or my perspective, on those whom I teach. That was what led me to say that I am not a Christian. It was my rebellious need to deny the imposition of any given perspective.

One's creativity and answerability or that which makes one human. A gift that goes with that humanity. A gift that cannot be denied without some loss of our humanity.

Will I still be me if I accept such imposition? Not for me. For me, that's what freedom means. The God-given right to respond as a human to the situations in which I find myself. Our focus today on the coming election was part of my concern. This is a very important election. Important in that those of us who find that we have been silenced, as workers, as those who must work for owners (corporations, institutions), for we have failed to accumulate enough wealth to let our money work for us, must refuse the silencing of anyone who denies our human answerability. Whether that be the governor, or the president, or any religious or other institutional group.

My problem, as Mevysen Ambrosius keeps pointing out, is that I must learn to accept the strangeness of some of the things Others choose to put forth as validity claims in our naked space. I need to let go of my need for control of chaos, and allow us as a community to happen, to evolve. And I am very controlling. (Would have made a great alcoholic if I had been able to drink, for it is said that alcoholics are very controlling.) So isn't it remarkable that the naked space has grown around such insistence on the guarantee of the freedom to be oneself?

Today there was an article in one of our papers about the Christian right boycotting all corporations who have contributed any way to freedom of choice for women on reproductive rights, or on acceptance of homosexuality. Logically, all that we who oppose such deniability of who we are have to do is encourage those who agree with us to boycott the boycott and buy from the corporations that support our political and social perspectives. Somehow, for me, that seems to carry the mixing of church and state too far. I don't want to commodify my beliefs. But I will if it seems a necessary alternative to being bullied into someone else's perspective of Christianity, of Islam, of spirituality.

I wonder how we could have so easily forgotten the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

The taking of positions, as long as you allow Others to take their own positions, to answer your validity claims with their own validity claims, for all to be considered in good faith, in the name of illocutionary understanding, will lead us to speak clearly to one another, to do our collective best to clarify our claims, and to help one another do so, in the interest of embracing differences as a human gift.

In the Art of Engagement we will examine the extent to which the visual aids us in such illocutionary discourse and frees each of us to be whoever he/she needs to be.

References:

• Voter Turnout as an Act of Engagement.
• Art of Engagement, exhibit and lecture, on Peter Selz' new book Art of Engagement: Visual Politics in California and Beyond
• Artists Represented in Art of Engagement Exhibition

NEWS, Announcements, and

Current Events Discussion Topics:

VOTE TUESDAY . . . VOTE TUESDAY . . . VOTE TUESDAY

Propositions on Ballot for Special Election Tuesday, November 8, 2005.

Revised Syllabi for jeanne's Fall 2005 Classes
Instructions for Tutoring Requests and to Upload Learning Records

• Revised syllabi for jeanne's Fall 2005 classes, given registration problems. The lectures will be rearranged by topic. The notes by date given. The texts by text. But I won't be able to do that until Friday.

• Learning Records for jeanne's classes, Fall 2005:

  Rosters for Learning Records
  Updated to Late Add List - everyone should be on roster this time - jeanne

  • Learning Records for Statistics, Sociology 220-01, Fall 2005 Updated October 15, 2005.
  • Learning Records for Moot Court, Sociology 370-01, Fall 2005 Updated October 15, 2005.
  • Learning Records for Sociology of the Helping Professions, Sociology 386-01, Fall 2005 Updated October 15, 2005.
  • Learning Records for Special Topics: Love 1A, Sociology 395-01, Fall 2005 Updated October 15, 2005.
  • Learning Records for Graduate Special Topics: Love 1A, Sociology 595-02, Fall 2005 Updated October 15, 2005

• Instructions page for joining transform_dom and transspan

  • Link for joining transform_dom: Fixed this link. jeanne

    
    Click to join transform_dom

• Yahoo Group: Transparent Learning Measurement

  We have created this site for students who have questions, would like someone to help by reading over their work, would like some practice in using the site, aren't clear on a specific concept and would like one of us to explain it in different words, etc.

  This is also the site on which you should ask me to put up a specific Message No. that you would like to use for your learning record. This'll make it much easier for me and Susan than trying to pull your messages for learning records from the general discussion.

  For instructions see Tutoring.

• Revised Syllabi for jeanne's Fall 2005 Classes
  Instructions for Tutoring Requests and to Upload Learning Records

Famous People and Concepts We Should Have Heard Of, But Often Haven't.

People


• Names to Know when Reading about Postmodernism, Postmodern Therapies, or PMTH Good quick reference list.

• Helnwein - Austrian artist who is deeply engaged and uses his art to convey his messages. Compared to Beuys, who despised the commodification of art.

• Botero - Colombian artist who could not help himself - he had to paint the violence he witnessed in his own country.

Concepts:

• The painting of torture and terror

Jeanne's Lectures for Fall 2005

• Lectures, Lecture Notes, Text Lectures

  Fall 2005:

  • Fall 2005 Letters to My Students: jeanne's World and Welcome to It
  • Application Lectures on Current Events in Chronological Order
  • Lecture Notes in Class Order
  • Text Summaries in Text Order
  • Self Tests in I. Activites Order; II. Class Order and; III. Text Order

  Self Tests Posted Week of October 20, 2005

  Lectures Posted for Week of October 30, 2005

  • Lecture Notes

    Index of Lecture Notes for Fall 2005

    • Lecture Notes from Tuesday, November 1, 2005 - See Topic of the Week for October 30, 2005.

    Text Lectures

  • Index for Text Lectures

    • Up soon.

    Discussion Pieces from Transform_dom

  • Index for Discussion Pieces

    • I don't have time to upload it separately, but would like to know what your reactions were to Matt's post on Jenny? What message did Mevysen convey about jeanne's response? How would you suggest we handle unanticipated responses in the naked space, with an eye to preserving both community and a meaningful focus on substantive discipline - i.e. focus on theory in its applications to practice?

    Visual Sociology

  • A Hanging Matter? On Helnwein as an artist of engagement.
    

    Helnwein's Adoration of the Magi on exhibit in Ireland

  • Learning to Use Art as a Tool for Discourse

    • Index of Art Techniques for Naked Space Exhibits, Virtual and Real

      • Index of Art Techniques for the Computer that you can use for the naked space exhibit

      • Index of Art Techniques that jeanne knows and that you can use for the naked space exhibit

    Our Naked Space Exhibit on Love 1A is now started on the Internet. Visit it by clicking on the hot links on the image map below. Remember, you can determine a hot link by running your cursor over the image until a hand appears. Click where the hand is. And start thinking out of the box.

    

    Invitation and Image Map for The Naked Space Exhibit for Fall 2005 Love 1A

    You might want to look at the Spring 2004 Exhibit Online:

    Invitation to Naked Space Exhibit

    
    Link anywhere on the invitation to enter the exhibit.

    • Hypertext Poem, Freeing the Feminine Other, Spring 2004
    • Table of Links to Contents

  Academic Support and Resource Links

  • A Range of Sources on Global Info

    Left/Right Perspectives - Cursor - New York Times - The National Review
    Arts and Letters Daily - The Economist - The Sierra Club - The Guardian
    Wall Street Journal - The Weekly Standard - The Nation - The Cato Institute (Libertarian)
    BBC NEWS | Americas - truthout - Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles
    Los Angeles Times - Chicago Tribune - La Opinion - The Washington Post
    Cursor's Al Jazeera Archive - Ha'aretz - Palestine Monitor - Palestine Report

    Indymedia - Mother Jones - BBC News - New Profile - KPFK Progressive Radio
    Progressive Sociologists Network Environmental Working Group - Mirror of Justice

  • Mentoring

    Graduate Exams Study

    • University of Chicago Prelim Study
    • Revised Syllabi for jeanne's Fall 2005 Classes
      
    • Instructions for Tutoring and Learning Records Requests

      Some older files not yet revised for Fall 2005, but useful.

    • How to Navigate the Web Site
      
    • Mentoring Help for New Students with Frequently Asked Questions
      
    • Mentoring Help for Returning Students with More Frequently Asked Questions
      
    • Shared Reading Suggestions
    • Learning Styles

    • Home Page for transform-dom You can read all the messages on Transforming Dominant Discourse from this page. Just click on messages in the left hand frame. You can read the messages, even if you're having difficulty signing up.

    Preparing for Graduate Study:

  • Test Prep Preview Joshua L. Stewart, recommended this site because it has free practice tests. If you're thinking of taking the GRE, the LAST, or any other graduate entry test, this might be a good place to gather some early information. Joshua suggested it for Praxis Practice, but a quick first look suggests they don't mean by praxis what we do. Check it out, anyway, if you have some spare time. jeanne

• Resource Literacy

  • Urban Legends Reference Pages. They post rumors and scams and phony e-mails circulating, to offer you a quick check. It worked for me. I entered "Fat Boy" as a google seacrch, and when I saw the Snopes.com link, I knew it would help, and it did. To not check your sources is as grievous as to plagiarize someone else's information and writing. the-artists.org Good quick reference site with many of the artists, art schools, and visual approaches to present social issue that we discuss. Added April 8, 2005.

  • Plagiarism Watch www.streetgangs.com site. The intelligent and effective use of resources means that you have to be careful not to plagiarize other people's material. We have several files on plagiarism, but I think the one that might make the most sense to you is this complaint on streetgangs.com. They give you samples of sites that have taken their material without citation, even at colleges, and they also give you examples of sites that have used their material with proper attribution. I find the irony poetic, and hope that their message will get through to you the importance of attribution. Dr. O'Connor on his Mega Criminal Justice site led me to streetgangs.com and noted that others frequently hack into the site. For that reason I have created a backup copy for your use in case you cannot access the actual site. Please be sure to attribute any citation to streetgangs.com. jeanne Backup.

Using Academic Language Effectively

Merriam-Webster Dictionary Search:

and Careers

• Resumes:

  • College Journal Resume Suggestions . . . Backup

• Letters of Recommendation:

  • Letters of Recommendation: How to get me to respond to your request. Many of you need letters. If you will follow this format, I can do them quickly and make them good.
  • Dog Letters If you do not give me adequate information, but do manage to get my attention, you may end up with a dog letter. That is a letter that says that you work well with people, that you are enthusiastic, that you persist at getting things done, and that everyone likes you. Of course, my dog gets along well with people, brings his ball to them, is enthusiastic, and persists at getting them to take his ball. Everyone likes my dog. That's a dog letter. It's so general it could be about my dog. jeanne

• Career Options You Might Not Have Considered

  • visual media and their interdependence with other means of knowing to understand that we are not totally rational creatures deciding things apart from our feelings and values. Wolfowitz (new President of the World Bank to aid developing countries AND principle advocate of the Iraq War) might feel very differently when he is exposed to visual and aural images of the poor developing countries that have not before been his primary concern. So we want to know how best to present those developing countries visually. And we might find that we can have a career doing that sort of thing, so it does reflect on us as individuals. Added April 2, 2005.

Sneaky Strokes and Flying Good Dogs

Flying Dog is also a painting by Zhang Kai. Best I've ever come across to illustrate our site with magic numbers and unicorns and whipped cream cats and now, flying dogs:

• Index of Nice Things We've Said to Each Other

• Flying Good Dogs: Whenever something happens in class that works out well, that inspires you, that helps in studying, whatever, take a few minutes to send us an e-mail. We'll post it where all of us can learn from it, including other teachers.

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