"Perhaps knowledge succeeds in engendering knowledge, ideas in transforming themselves and modifying one another (but how? - historians have not yet enlightened us on this point)."
Michel Foucault, The Order Of Things
"Someone, you or me, comes forward and says: I would like to learn to live finally.
Finally but why?
To learn to live: a strange watchword. [...] Will we ever know how to live and first
of all what "to learn to live" means? And why finally?"
Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx
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A spectre haunts the Academy |
I cling yet to a memory
of his face. My teacher. My mentor. My guide to the learned mysteries and
invented masteries of the Academy. Yet it is like a face drawn in sand at the
edge of the sea; Each new discovery threatens to erase him. The infinite nature
of the Academy makes a mockery of my capacity to learn, but I know that this
fading face and I are bound by an ineffable logic. Without me, he will cease to
be. As will I without him.
My epistème, the Academy is the licensor of all that I know, and
emancipator of all that I have forgotten. Such mocking forgetfulness, I am
certain my master knew intimately, but he omitted to acquaint me with its ways.
Wasn't I worthy of such initiation? Or have I forgotten it? My lifetime has
been spent wandering the hexagonal classrooms that make up the Academy's
mystical architecture. Now, in the twilight imposed by my waning sight, I am
forced to stop in this darkened classroom, and reflect.
I am uncertain how I came to be in the Academy, whether I was born
in it or brought to it. It seems that any answer I might give to that question
would be tantamount to a myth of origins, and I am the least worthy subject for
such a grand narrative. Far more worthy of the little time I have left is the
story of the Academy itself, were it possible to tell it. The proliferation of
such epics testifies to the value of the endeavour: They are to be found in
many a hexagon, pored over by zealous disciples, transcribed by dutiful
scholars, and glanced at with or without reverence by lost souls like myself.
Some surmise from such volumes that the Academy is infinite in
space, and has neither beginning nor end in time. Others, from sources just as
credible, infer that it was created and awaits its destruction. It is
measurable, with enough determination and discipline. Those of the first
persuasion compete feverishly for classrooms within which to trade new,
ephemeral and disruptive ideas. Those who adhere to the latter dogma purge the
Academy of heresies and with missionary zeal ensure their canonical texts make
their way to every hexagon. To the Disruptors, the future of the Academy is a
beautiful blank page, and the past a foreign country. To the Gideons, the
future is an evil imminent, and only the lessons of golden ages past can
prepare us for it.
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A mystical architecture |
In my senectitude, through classroom after classroom, I have felt
a spectre haunting the Academy. Not the spectral architect, article of faith of
the Gideons, nor the spectral whiteness of the Disruptors' unwritten futures,
but the spectre of a secret, hidden in plain sight. Having but little of that
sense left, I can barely grasp at its portent: Only now at the end of my wandering have my
steps felt as the result of my own agency, and a great laughter has seized my
breast.
Some believe that among all the hexagons, somewhere is to be found the hexagon, the first and last classroom,
the alpha and the omega, in which is contained the source code of all the
teachings of all the classrooms of the Academy. As I write these words in
perceptibly growing darkness, I fancy that I have found it. It resembles a
cave, and shadows dance upon its walls. My teacher is gone, and I know that I will never leave this
classroom.
Rest, rest perturbed Spirit! Finally, I have learned to live.
Rest, rest perturbed Spirit!
Just wow. Please consider submitting this to the journal Qualitative Inquiry http://qix.sagepub.com
ReplyDeleteThanks, Steve. I have emailed them.
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