Cross-Worlds: Short Stories on Global Themes

I woke up with a vivid thought one day - how can we introduce our students, in schools and in NIE, to newer writers and more importantly, writers who explore contemporary global issues? Everyday, we read about terrorist attacks, asylum seekers, instances of xenophobia, the effects of climate change and so on. Yet, the literature classroom appears to be disconnected from everyday reality. Policymakers continue to emphasize the importance of educating students for the twenty-first century but in reality, pedagogical approaches may not have changed much. A number of literature teachers continue to find security in familiar texts such as To Kill a Mockingbird, Animal Farm,  Lord of the Flies etc. How can we expose teachers and students to newer writers as well as a wider range of writers from around the world?

The development of this book was no easy matter. The first obstacle was finding a willing publisher. I approached two publishers who declined after considering the proposal for some time. The reason was that they did not think the literature school market was big enough to warrant such a project even though the book was also to be sold to the public. This made me more aware of the challenges local writers and researchers face. If enrolment in literature remains as it is or continues to fall, this will have a trickle-down effect on writers, researchers and publishers and the overall literary culture in our country. Some time passed and I managed to contact Marshall Cavendish. Thankfully, they believed in the value of this project and were willing to give it a shot.

The second obstacle was funding. Copyright cost for the book came up to about S$7000 and I was about to throw in the towel until I met someone who suggested I approach various organizations to request for funding. Thanks to the Lee Foundation and Singapore Teachers Union, I managed to obtain a grant that covered these costs. 

The book has finally been published and was off the press a few days ago! It has been a tremendous joy to work on this project. Although the anthology contains only ten stories, the selection of these stories took many months. I read countless stories and anthologies and much time was also spent corresponding with the authors and negotiating with their publishers. Broadly, I was guided by a few principles: 1. I wanted a range of contemporary writers originating from different parts of the world; 2. Each story had to deal with different global themes that I thought was important for students and readers to explore; 3. Finally, the quality of writing had to be compelling. Part of my research also involved reading critical literary reviews about each story I chose and I dare say that every single story in this collection has been intentional and carefully selected. I'm also thankful to my colleagues and friends who spent time during their holidays looking at the drafts and giving me critical feedback: Amelia Gan, Angelia Poon, Chin Ying Fen, Foo Soo Ling, Kali Sri Sivanantham, Matthew Crawshaw, Noridah Moosa, Reena Kaur, Sakunthalai Surian, Sandra Teng, Tessa Khew, Junaidah Abdul Wahab and Yang Wei.

I hope that literature teachers will pick up this book and introduce the stories to their students. More importantly, may the stories inspire new ways of engaging with urgent issues in our world today and help our students to be more globally aware, informed and empathetic. The book will also be available in local bookstores and I hope the general reader will find it provocative as well.

To read the introduction that provides an overview of the book, click here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nsRENqHMTvGcekG0Q7eUbL-HyFOq8v0sySbmmDoxgK0/edit?pli=1

More info on the book can also be found here: http://www.marshallcavendish.com/marshallcavendish/genref/CrossWorlds_B882_Singapore.aspx

Litup Festival 27 September

I'll be joining Ken Mizusawa, Desmond Kon, and Marc Nair in a panel on "Reading The World: 21st Century Literature" on 27th September, from 12-1pm at Music Studio 1 at Aliwal Arts Centre. 

This is part of the Litup Festival. Visit this site for more info: www.litup.sg

Synopsis: Join three eminent educators who are also passionate writers and experts in their respective fields as they discuss the way forward for Singapore to encounter and embrace literature in the 21st century.

2014 Critics Choice Book Award, American Educational Studies Association

My book Reading the world, the globe, and the cosmos: Approaches to teaching literature for the twenty-first century, published by Peter Lang, New York in 2013 has won the 2014 Critics Choice Book Award by the American Educational Studies Association.

Each year, a committee of AESA members selects a number of titles it regards as outstanding books that may be of interest to those in educational studies. These books are designated as AESA Critics’ Choice Award winners and are displayed prominently at the annual meeting.

The Critics’ Choice Award serves to recognize and increase awareness of recent scholarship deemed to be outstanding in its field and of potential interest to members of the Association.

For more information on the award, see: http://www.educationalstudies.org/awards.html

Invest in literature education for our young

The National Schools Literature Festival was held on 12 July 2014 at Dunman High School. Altogether about 85 schools, 15000 students turned up. The image on the right involve members of the organizing committee.

Here are some of the wonderful comments we received:

 "Large turn out of students and teachers. Great. Fantastic gathering of people with an interest in literature. Confident students on duty. Open to many schools to participate."

"The events—educational yet fun—really rekindled the passion for many of the students I observed, and in fact made me go home with a renewed appreciation for what literature can do in my classroom."

"The different activities enhanced students' learning especially the debates; provided students with other valuable perspectives and hone their skills of analysis."

"They realised Literature was a lot more fun and interesting, especially when they saw their peers in action."

"They recognised that literature is fun, and not just a subject to study for exams."


"I think my students got to experience Lit in an engaging and exciting way that no classroom environment could provide. The sheer size of the Lit Fest was also exhilarating for the students."

For more info on the festival, visit: http://nationalschoolslitfest.wikispaces.com/

The following is a post I wrote that was published in the forum page of Straits Times on July 23, 2014. I wrote this after the National Schools Literature Festival which coincided at the time with NLB's censoring of books. 

OVER a week ago, the National Schools Literature Festival celebrated its 10th anniversary. More than 150 teachers and 1,500 students from 76 secondary schools participated in this annual event to celebrate literature.

Unfortunately, public attention was centred on the National Library Board controversy and the event was largely overlooked.

Besides the censorship of books, another issue that should be addressed is the role of literature education in Singapore.


Figures released last year revealed that the number of students taking pure literature at the O levels fell from 48 per cent of the Secondary 4 cohort in 1992 to 22 per cent in 2001, and 9 per cent in 2012.

The main reason that students now have more subjects to choose from does not excuse the need for a more concerted effort to revive this subject.

One fundamental role that literature education can play is the cultivation of a critical reading public that must begin with our young.

This was observed during the festival, where students debated a diversity of issues dealing with relativity in Jean Tay's Everything But The Brain, social perspectives of women's roles in Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband, and the extent to which violence in books, such as William Golding's Lord Of The Flies, is unsuitable for younger readers.

Literature education equips students to critically read texts. It teaches them how to negotiate diverse and competing values and beliefs, not through acts of censorship but through dialogue and fostering dispositions of empathy and hospitality towards those from different and marginalised communities in our society and in the world.

While attending the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the man who orchestrated the transportation of Jews and other groups to Auschwitz and other concentration camps during World War II, philosopher Hannah Arendt described him as having "the inability to think from the standpoint of somebody else". She partly attributed this to his reluctance to read anything except Nazi-controlled newspapers and party propaganda.

Arendt provides an important reminder that in our globally interconnected world, we cannot afford to adopt a protectionist stance and need to be more intentional in cultivating among our young the critical-ethical reasoning capacity to engage with a range of literature from around the world, including those that provide perspectives from minority and foreign communities.

Acknowledgments

The ideas for "Reading the world, the globe, and the cosmos" took shape over the last four years and this work would not have been possible without the encouragement or guidance of countless people whom I am grateful for. The following is taken from the acknowledgments section of the book:

This book developed from my dissertation at Teachers College, Columbia University, USA. I am grateful to Dr. Ruth Vinz for her mentorship and guidance throughout the four years of this research, from its initial sketches to its present form. The many insights I gained from our conversations have been vital to the development of this project. I would also like to thank Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz for her consistent support in helping me discover my voice and shaping my thinking on this subject; Dr. David Hansen for pushing me to ask philosophical questions essential to this work and for powerfully expanding my thinking on cosmopolitanism and education; Dr. Gauri Viswanathan for her penetrating wisdom, whose work on the ideological institutionalization of the discipline of English literature first inspired me with ideas that have led to this book; and Dr. Sheridan Blau, whose expansive knowledge of the field of English education has provided rich layers to this work.

 

I am thankful for critical friends without whom this project would have been less enjoyable and less enriching. Nick Sousanis, in particular, has journeyed with me throughout my entire writing process and our regular discussions have contributed to strengthening this work. I have also been fortunate to be able to partner with Deb Sawch and Alison Villanueva on various fieldwork projects that have opened my eyes to twenty-first century education around the world.

 

I thank my editor, Dr. Cameron McCarthy, for his constructive comments and guidance throughout each stage of this project. I am appreciative of Chris Myers, Sophie Appel, Phyllis Korper, and the editorial staff of Peter Lang for the time and effort invested into the production of this book.

 

I am grateful to the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, for providing funding to conduct this research.

 

I owe much of this work to the unwavering support of my family. I am grateful to Wilson Tan, my husband, for his tremendous patience and the unconditional love he has shown me. I thank my parents, Dr. Richard and Tina Choo, for their love, prayers, and everyday acts of concern. Finally, I thank God for His daily provision of grace and strength and in whom all things are possible.

New publication on Literature education

 Choo, Suzanne S. (2013). Reading the world, the globe, and the cosmos: Approaches to teaching literature for the twenty-first century. New York: Peter Lang.
 
Abstract:
 

The purpose of this book is restore the centrality of pedagogy in governing the ways literary texts are received, experienced, and interpreted by students in the classroom. Utilizing a method of pedagogical criticism, it provides an account of core approaches to teaching literature that have emerged across history and the conceptual values informing these approaches. More importantly,

Reading the World discusses how these values have been shaped by broader global forces and key movements in the discipline of English Literature. To varying degrees, these approaches are aimed at cultivating a hospitable imagination so that students may more fully engage with multiple others in the world. Given the reality of an increasingly interconnected twenty-first century, literature pedagogy plays a vital role in schools by demonstrating how world, global, and cosmopolitan approaches to teaching literature can facilitate the prioritization of the other, challenge us to think about how we can be accountable to multiple others in the world, and push us to continually problematize the boundaries of our openness towards the other.

Advanced Praise

“While there are many published accounts of approaches to teaching literature, research on the role of reader in relation to texts, multicultural approaches to teaching literature, and critical and theoretical criticism of literature, I know of no book that provides a focused and historical discussion and presents a previously untapped focus on the centrality of pedagogy in the debates concerning the values and purposes of literature education. Reading The World, The Globe, and the Cosmos delves into the heart of how literature education has ‘come into being’ as a school subject, but one that has a contested and complex history of purpose and value.” (Ruth Vinz, Teachers College, Columbia University)

"Reading the world, the globe and the cosmos combines important historical and philosophical analysis with normative perspectives to teaching Literature for the twenty-first century. It recovers a vital role for Literature pedagogy in our time by inviting us to consider its essential connections to hospitality and hospitable ways of engaging the other.” (Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Teachers College, Columbia University)

Excerpts from the Series Editor's Forward

"With this wonderful text, Reading the World, the Globe, and the Cosmos, we must now add Suzanne Choo to this venerable list of feminist intellectuals who want us to consider a wider range of subjects concerning globalization than we normally explore. Choo writes from the perspective that all of these logics related to globalization are now fully articulated to schooling and must pass through the pedagogical encounter in the classroom. Ultimately, globalization must be brought into dialogue with pedagogical criticism. Here the task is to construct from the encounter with literature — reaching back into previous centuries and forward into the twenty-first century — models of thoughtfulness and meaningful, empathetic relationships. [...] The project here is ambitious but urgent. The teaching of literature has often insulated the literary text from the world, recuperating and preserving the “literary” for a vain form of aesthetics. On the other hand, teaching about the world in geography, social studies, etc. has often ignored the imaginative domain of literature. Scholars like Edward Said have sought to overcome this gulf in the disciplines in such powerful ripostes as Orientalism (1979), The World, the Text and the Critic (1994), and On Late Style: Music and Literature against the Grain (2007). Homi Bhaba, in his Locations of Culture (1994), also points to the critically important work of the text in relation to the vigorous life world of subaltern actors. For Bhabha, texts take on their significance in an encounter with human actors at the extremes of Empire: “a literature of empire . . . played out in the wild and wordless wastes of colonial India, Africa, the Caribbean” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 102). The text then is conditioned by the play of globalization’s asymmetries.
Choo builds on these insights by introducing a form of pedagogical criticism that brings the globe into the literature classroom. Her interest here is not to describe the world as it is. Neither is it merely to improve the pedagogy of literature. Choo raises, instead, the issue of teaching new cosmopolitan values through pedagogy by integrating the “hospitable imagination.” The hospitable imagination is a space for the gestation of creative and critical reflexivity. The classroom, after all, may be the place of a kind of last stand in an age of the ever-expanding refeudalization of the public sphere. As such, it offers possibilities for elaborating networks to the world — networks for a New-World imaginative geography and the building up of subaltern knowledges. In this manner, the classroom becomes a space for the staging of a new enterprise in literature studies—for thinking about the world as we mediate aesthetics. The radical promise of Choo’s intervention here is to bring the entire range of aesthetic critique and “reply” (Paz, 1990, p. 5) to the West into a dialogue with globalization from below. Here the concatenation and plurality of voices might serve to reinvigorate the now deeply invaded space of the modern classroom where one might argue the future of humanity resides." (Cameron McCarthy, Director of Global Studies in Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

For more info, click here: http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?event=cmp.ccc.seitenstruktur.detailseiten&seitentyp=produkt&pk=77942&cid=367&concordeid=312178
 
To get this from Amazon, click here: http://www.amazon.com/Reading-World-Globe-Cosmos-Twenty-first/dp/1433121778/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376984394&sr=8-1&keywords=reading+the+world+the+globe+and+the+cosmos




Literature and Critical Values Education

The original title of my article published in ST last sunday was "The role of Literature for critical values education in the 21st century" but ST changed it to something along the lines of teaching values. I thought I'd say it upfront that I am opposed to the idea of using literature to teach values but what I do argue for is that literature is a powerful platform for the critical engagement of values. I think this becomes apparent if one reads the full article.

What's the difference? Let's start with the notion of values. The term "values" is linked to the idea of “good” as found in valere, its Latin root, referring to the good or worth of something. We can trace this concept further back to Aristotle who argues, in Nicomachean Ethics, that “Every craft and every investigation, and likewise every action and decision, seems to aim at some good; hence the good has been well described as that at which everything aims.” In other words, everything we do is grounded on a concept of value or a belief in the good of something.

For example, a book is written because the writer upholds certain beliefs about value/good of what he is saying; teachers select certain literary texts for study because they believe it is of value or good for some reason. This value can be individualistic (e.g. writing is liberating and pleasurable to oneself), instrumental (e.g. the literary text contributes to a national narrative), or other-oriented i.e. good for someone else (e.g. the writing contributes to fighting social injustice, human rights for particular groups). Of course, these are not discrete categories but may overlap. The point is that underlying everything we do – every action, every word we write, what we choose to teach in the classroom, what we teach etc. – are values or beliefs in the good of something. One can also perform out of a bad intention but that itself is a value or belief in the good of something.

Now when we talk about literature education, I am specifically referring to literature education in the public sphere which I have argued in the article is premised on criticism. Yes, we can talk about experiencing texts and so on but literature teaching and assessment have been historically established on the principles of criticism. For example, at the secondary and JC level, students are initiated into how to perform critical appreciation, practical criticism, informed response to texts etc.

To take the concept of criticism a little further, literature education equips students to critically engage with the kinds of values and belief systems inherent in texts and informing texts. In this way, criticism disrupts any naive notion of a “pure experience” or innocent reading the text. For example, a student may enjoy reading Animal Farm on my own at home but in the classroom, the teacher facilitates conversations and dialogues about the inherent values in the text e.g. the dangers of totalitarianism that Orwell highlights or the socio-political factors that informed the way the text was produced and received etc.

I think that if we want to argue for Literature education’s significance in the curriculum today, we need to return to the idea of how it equips students with the dispositions and capacities to critically engage with values in all kinds of texts. These dispositions and skills are essential as societies become increasing globally connected and hyer-mediated.

The Role of Literature for Critical Values Education in the Twenty-first Century

The following is an article I wrote that was published in The Straits Times, Think Section (p. 43) on Sunday March 3, 2013.

 

Once the most central subject in schools in Britain and its colonies during the age of Empire, English Literature has now lost its place of prominence. This phenomenon is apparent in the case of Singapore.

That it is not a new occurrence but evidence of a steep decline over the past two decades is obvious from figures released last month, showing a fall in enrolment for ‘O’ and ‘N’ level Literature since 1992.

One can trace Literature’s decline to the period following Singapore’s independence when more emphasis was placed on the communicative aspect of English through policies such as bilingualism.

English was positioned as a first language, the language of business and a bridge language connecting different races while the study of mother tongue languages was essential to ensuring that citizens would remain rooted to “Asian” values and traditions.

Effectively, this contributed to a gulf between the study of English Language and English Literature so that the former was a key national priority while the latter was marginalised since its problematic ties to colonialism meant that English was not to be the avenue through which culture and values would be transmitted.

What the state astutely recognised then was English Literature’s inherent connection to values education. Indeed, when English Literature was first constructed as a school subject and introduced into the national system of education in Britain during the late 18th century, it was primarily a platform for the cultivation of bourgeoisie English values.

One way in which the Ministry of Education in Singapore sought to distance the subject from its colonial roots was by renaming it Literature in English so as to include a broader range of literary works from Singapore and other parts of the world.

To fully address Literature’s decline, however, there is a need to return to Literature’s foundational role as a platform for critical values education in the 21st century.

In contrast to values education that is didactic, involving the transmission of values in a top- down and fact-based manner, Literature education equips students to negotiate the multiplicity of values and belief systems of diverse cultures.

In my studies of Literature classrooms in Australia, Singapore and the United States, I have observed, for example, how a teacher “interrupted” his students’ reading of William Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew by getting them to compare and contrast the taming of women in other societies through various stories and plays by Jamaica Kincaid, Kyoko Mori, Maxine Hong Kingston and Stella Kon. Through this, students gained insights into the oppression of women across cultures.

In another class, the teacher had students read Shaun Tan’s graphic novel, The Arrival, centered on the experience of immigration, followed by various short stories on human rights. After that, students conducted research and simulated a forum in which they discussed various social issues from the perspective of the state, the citizen and different marginalised groups.

In both these cases, students engaged with a form of values education that was not about the acquisition of a set of normative principles but rather the cultivation of dispositions including the ability to examine issues from multiple perspectives, to appreciate ambiguity, and to make informed evaluations of values and their consequences.

While Literature education does foster aesthetic appreciation and a taste for good writing, what we often forget is that when students are asked to respond to questions such as “What makes us sympathise with Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart”, “Is justice served at the end of Macbeth”, or “How does the writer develop the sense of irony in the poem Dulce Et Decorum Est”, they need to consider the underlying beliefs determining a character’s intentions and behaviour, the different social-cultural values influencing how concepts such as justice are perceived, and the ways in which literary techniques contribute to the implied author’s philosophical proposition in the text.

In short, these are questions requiring critical engagements with values.

The reality of cultural clashes and mixings as a result of our globally interconnected world has meant that it is now difficult to sustain any singular, universal value system.

Through exposure to literary texts from around the world, students gain access to the consciousness and lived realities of other communities; they apply critical reflection and ethical reasoning as they navigate various cultural and moral ambiguities conveyed vividly through the struggles of various characters in literature and, in the process of experiencing other worlds, they develop an imagination hospitable towards the powerless and the foreign.

Far from being an impractical subject, Literature education has become even more vital in our porous, networked societies today.

In her book Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs The Humanities, University of Chicago professor Martha Nussbaum observes that economically advanced nations tend to invest their systems of education in equipping students with useful and highly applied skills suited to economic development.

“If this trend continues,” she says, “nations all over the world will soon be producing generations of useful machines rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves, criticise tradition, and understand the significance of another person’s sufferings and achievements.”

There is a need for policymakers and educators to restore the centrality of Literature education in Singapore, but this can only occur when the significant role Literature education can play in promoting critical values education is first recognised.

 

The writer is an assistant professor with the English Language and Literature Academic Group at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University. Her research interests are in the history of Literature education as well as Literature education for global and cosmopolitan citizenship.

The storm and Adorno

The storm hit us on Sunday and for five days we were without power. It's so hard to live without power particularly in the context of modern America. If one were in a village in Nepal or Tibet, perhaps it would have been manageable to live for weeks without power because then the imagination would not expect, would not have a known reference to look to. During this time, we took a suitcase of clothes and our dog, jumped into a car and drove as far as we could get at 9 PM that night. In semi-darkness, I grabbed whatever books seemed important to me at the time. On reaching a little bed & breakfast we had stumbled upon, I found myself reading the works of Theodor Adorno and the writers of the Frankfurt school e.g. Habermas. What it must have been like, writing in exile, away from home, leaving behind one's possessions, living in uncertainty, waiting to hear the latest news about the homeland. Adorno and his Frankfurt friends had escaped to America and would face a kind of inhumanity expressed in the form of passive indifference. This was something Kant had warned against when he wrote about the ethics of hospitality. Hospitality is not simply allowing the stranger to come and live temporarily in one's country, but it is also the spirit of making that stranger feel welcome. As Gayatri Spivak mentioned when she visited our class this week, the first thing most people are told when they are allowed to stay in a foreign country is the law of return. Perhaps it was all that pent up feeling of exile or facing passive inhospitality that drove Adorno to write about ethics inherent in aesthetics. Adorno emphasized the importance of "non-identity thinking" - the moment one moves beyond a subjectivity tied to identity connected with race, ethnicity, nation-state etc, one begins to understand subjectivity in terms of what Confucius would call 'human-ness' - an affinity with the human no matter where he or she is from. This is an affinity that seeks to understand rather than judge, that seeks to value individuals not so much for their usefulness but for the value of their humanity.

Austerlitz

A book that directly contrasts with "When we were orphans" is Sebald's "Austerlitz. This is one of the best books I've read this year. It is disorienting at first but starts to come together in the latter part of the book. All this is part of the whole sense of being lost, of losing one's childhood, of trying to piece the fragments while recognizing the fluid, slippery nature of memory. The book is an aesthetically and ethically brilliant work of memory set in the context of the holocaust.

When we were orphans

Just read this work and am appalled by it. In my opinion this is the worst of Ishiguro's work. It may be aesthetically well-written but I think it is ethically flawed primarily because it trivializes the massacre of the Chinese by the Japanese during WWII. The protagonist in his search for his mother is seemingly deluded and delusional in that his obsession causes him to ignore the reality of what is going on around him. Some could argue that this is part of Ishiguro's aesthetics, that he is not concerned about representing history but is instead exploring the instability of subjectivity which in part may reference the art for art sake's argument i.e. the work of art should be appreciated for itself not for some moral or transcendental message believed to be inherent in it. The question here concerns the ethics and responsibility of writers in adequately representing global trauma, global holocaust and global massacres without trivializing them. This is particularly so given that the book is written for western readers who may be less aware of the asian holocaust. By glossing over this event which is superficially mentioned in the background of the text, the author is complicit in the larger, political trivializing of this in the imagination of the west.

The thousand autumns of Jacob de Zoet

I'm not really a fan of historical fiction but recently had to read this book for a class. It's entitled "The thousand autumns of Jacob de Zoet" by David Mitchell and it's absolutely fascinating. Aside from all the intrigue and charges of over-romanticizing oriental culture, Mitchell deftly depicts in stunning clarity the extraterritorial transnational spaces that existed in the seventeenth century. These were essentially trading posts on artificial islands on colonized lands such as Java and governed by companies such as the Dutch East India Company. The text depicts this in-between space where the sovereignty of the nation state and state laws become ambiguous and fuzzy.

The Spectator

Today I'm pouring over articles published in eighteenth century peridoicals of Addison and Steele's Tatler and Spectator as well as Jonson's Idler. The periodicals mark literature's entry into the public sphere as so well argued by Habermas. Essentially, they established the foundations for literary education later in the late nineteenth century. What's particularly interesting to me is the obvious tensions between anicient and modern; critical reading and critical writing; the notion of taste and the notion of the popular. The function of the critic and the criticism's essential ties to public literary engagements become obvious at this point.

18th century German Aesthetics

I spent the past week reading through five core classic German philosophers in aesthetics beginning with Baumgarten, and proceeding to Kant, Schiller, Scheling and Hegel. Baumgarten, credited for first coining the term aesthetics as the philosophical study of sensual perception, paved the way for aesthetics as a discipline. It was Kant, however who, in his 1790 publication of Critique of Judgment, established aesthetics as a philosophical discipline moving it away from aesthetics as the study of formal properties of art works instead emphasizing the ontological characteristics of art work through its relation to cognition, beauty, morality and the transcendental Absolute. Someone once told me that among all his three critiques, his last one i.e. the Critique of Judgment, was the least important. Yet, on reading Schiller, Hegel and various other secondary readings, I cannot help but see how absolutely influential Kant's ideas are. Almost every philosopher of aesthetics after Kant theorizes aesthetics based on one or another of Kant's claims or assumptions. One may ask what all this has to do with literature education today. In fact, I think Kant's critique is one of the first philosophical writings on aesthetics that is based on the significance of collective aesthetic judgment in the public sphere or what he terms "subjective universality". This subsequently paved the way for further theorizing on aesthetic and literature education. Another interesting point I found is that all five of these scholars situate their philosophy of aesthetics against scientific utilitarianism of their period. For example, Schiller states, "Utility is the great idol of the time, to which all powers do homage and all subjects are subservient". Much like today, they were reacting against the pragmatic-instrumental impulses of the time and in doing so, were fervently attempting to re-establish aesthetics as a core discipline.

Arcadia

Watched this play on Broadway a couple of weeks ago and then bought the play script to read. I must admit, it's been a long while since I watched a play that left me thinking for a long time. An aside here - I think the play might be better read than watched! What is brilliant about the play is that it seemingly leads you in one direction so that at the beginning, you follow along an investigative path; as you come to the end of Act one however, the play's philosophical interest comes to the forefront. It is encapsulated in the question asked right at the beginning "do you think God is a Newtonian" and the merger of investigation and philosophical debates, sexual love and mathematics, past and present all leads to the very powerful climax and the very problem of sponaneity that confounds determinism.

On the aesthetic education of man

I'm using this blog mainly to keep track of my own reading. I'm reading a couple of different things a day. I might read half a book, put it down and read a chapter of something completely different like a play script, move on to a chapter of something else and then return to the book. The trick is how to put all these things in conversation with each other?

Last few days however, I found myself drawn to the German Aesthetic tradition particularly during the period of 1790s when Kant wrote "Critique of Aesthetic Judgement". I started with Baumgarten who was the first to coin the word "Aesthetic" but referred primarily to the study of the sensuous. Then I went on to Schiller's "On the aesthetic education of man" - yes critics have said it is a problematic book because Schiller is not consistent with the technical terms he uses but it is enlightening how a lot of what he says resonates today. For example, the de-valuing of the arts at the expense of science, the privileging of rationality and reason at the expense of sense and feeling, the focus on time/finite at the expense of the infinite and that which is transcedental, beyond time. What I find most interesting is that unlike some contemporary scholars who call for a de-privileging within the space of this dichotomy, Schiller is calling for a third space: "But because both conditions remain eternally opposed to one another, they cannot be united in any other way than by being suppressed. Our second business is therefore to make this connection perfect, to carry them out with such purity and perfection that both conditions disappear entirely in a third one, and no trace of separation remains in the whole, otherwise we segregate, but do not unite" (location 775). This third space is one that then becoems inclusive of multiple realities, of a kind of hybridity at ease with indeterminacy "beauty, does not consist in the exclusion of certain realities, but the absolute including of all; that is not therefore limitation, but infinitude" (location 790).

The management of grief

Read Bharati Mukherjee short story "The Management of Grief" - a really beautiful and moving transnational story. Mukherjee’s story is an example of transnational literature that complicates simplistic and deterministic accounts of globalization. For example, the context of the story involves the Air India Flight 182 terrorist bombing in 1985. The plane, having left Montreal en route through London to New Delhi, explodes over Ireland killing 329 people including 280 Canadians, 27 British citizens, and 22 Indians. In terms of airspace and casualties, the attack transgress national borders even though its rationale seems highly localized since it concerns Sikh militants disgruntled over the India government’s assault on one of Sikhism’s holiest temple. This is an example of how local politics in so-called periphery nations can affect the lives of those in “core” nations. The preceding investigations of the bombing take place, not in India, but in Canada for the next twenty years. Perhaps this is also Mukherjee’s intention in writing this story – to demonstrate that it is a cross-border issue that intersects with other nations and cultures. Thus, much of her story revolves around the idea of travel. The protagonist, Mrs Bhave, in attempting to reconcile her emotions over the loss of her husband and children, travels from Toronto to Ireland and then to India; while back in Canada, she follows a white social worker, Judith, to visit a Sikh family in an apartment dominated by Indian and West Indian community. Yet, it is this motif of travelling that conveys the sense of fluidity rather than a linear, uni-directional movement from core to periphery. This is most clearly evidenced in the scene when Judith gets Mrs Bhave’s help to persuade the Sikh couple to sign a release form that will enable a trustee to manage the couple’s finances. Though Judith, as a representative of the Canadian provincial government, appears altruistic in her offers to help the elderly couple manage their finances, she is not aware of the political implications of her act. By asking the couple to sign the release forms, they are entrusting the payment of the bills, investment of their money, and income to the state. Despite the real danger of losing all the material possessions they have, including their home, the couple continues to hold on to what they deem more important – their autonomy. This autonomy guarantees the freedom for this couple to hold on to their traditions and not allow a foreign state to intrude or influence their belief system which, in this case, means faith in God for the material rather than faith in the state. If signing the release form is representative of the symbolic act of releasing their sons, then autonomy also allows the couple to resist a Western cultural treatment of death by continuing to maintain the hope that their sons will return. When Mrs Bhave reflects that “in our culture, it is a parent’s duty to hope”, there is already an implicit dichotomy between “our” and “theirs” or us versus them. This dichotomy represents that imaginary border in which the “periphery” refuses to submit or conform to the culture and laws of the “core”.

Derrida's last interview

I've been doing a little research on Derrida. In his later works, Derrida applies deconstruction on concepts of ethics like friendship, justice, forgiveness, hospitality. One interviewer raised a question as to whether his childhood had any impact on his writings. As a Jew, Derrida faced a lot of persecution in his elementary school years so much so that he left school. I've also started reading Robert Eaglestone interesting book on postmodernism and the holocaust where he examines the extent to which Derrida and Levinas are haunted by the holocaust. Something strikes me about Derrida as well. For all his work on deconstruction, trace, undecidability, 'slipperiness' and so on i.e. the rejection of any fixed or final transcendental signified, there is a sense that Derrida is always trying to reach for it somehow, the purity of the term, the purity of the concept. He talks about the purity of forgiveness and much of his text defines what the impurity of forgiveness is (not what it is not for that idea cannot be fixed). Yet, isn't the whole paradox the case that there is a grand narrative at work here - which is precisely in the theorizing of the inherent escapability of any transcendental narrative? Perhaps this quote sums it up:

"I am at war with myself, it’s true, you couldn’t possibly know to what extent, beyond what you can guess, and I say contradictory things that are, we might say, in real tension; they are what construct me, make me live, and will make me die. I sometimes see this war as terrifying and difficult to bear, but at the same time I know that that is life" (Derrida, Learning to live finally: The last interview, 2007)

I've started reading Jacques Ranciere's "The Ignorant Schoolmaster" and I find this text really liberating. It begins with a compelling story of a professor who asks his Flemish students who have no knowledge of French to read and analyze a French literary text. The capacity of his students to decipher the text without his help astounds him. Ranciere's text is an important reminder about the notion of believing in an inherent intellectual capacity in every human being. What happens if we begin with equality, this assumption that "all men have equal intelligence (by this he is not referring to IQ but intellectual capacity to learn), instead of inequality (which frames much of educational discourse)? "To explain something to someone is first of all to show him he cannot understand it by himself. Before being the act of the pedagogue, explication is the myth of pedagogy, the parable of a world divided into knowing minds and ignorant ones, ripe minds and immature ones, the capable and incapable, the intelligent and the stupid." What I like about Ranciere's work is his underlying ethics of concern for the empowerment and liberation of those who are continually marginalized or voiceless.

The Elephant Vanishes

Just read the story "The Elephant Vanishes" by Haruki Murakami in his short story collection. One of the points he raises is the manner in which superficiality has pervaded everyday conversations so people no longer know how to communicate beyond the shallow and mundane. We have "markers ... to follow" and unconscious borders that ensure conversations do not move beyond talking about dressing, rents, jobs and mundane news events. In an ultra technocratic modernised world overly concerned with maintaining balance and orderliness, the consequence is an imbalance of perception - of perceiving value in the useless and not finding value in the 'useless'.