Page 92 - Šolsko polje, XXVIII, 2017, no. 3-4: Education and the American Dream, ed. Mitja Sardoč
P. 92
šolsko polje, letnik xxviii, številka 3–4
all, the winds that flow within the self sometimes come from other, less
commodity-driven worlds—is this not part of our divine entelechy? Cap-
italists prefer to hide behind their innocent and guileless minds, claim-
ing that they remain untouched by the unctuous urges that affect so
many persons of power. After all, who would want to belong to a cabal
that thrives upon aggressively exploiting workers? I hear a lot from liberals
and fellow Catholics that in order to change the world we need to change
ourselves. In one sense this is self-evident sophomoric advice. But may-
be the best way of changing ourselves is working to change the society—
beginning with action and then reflecting upon such action. We need to
avoid an antiseptic cleavage here, between self and society. Some students
and colleagues, have, over the years, told me that they won’t be ready to
change the world until they’ve mastered the classics in sociology, psychol-
ogy, pedagogy, political theory, etc. Well, the word ‘master’ is relative, but
the task of reading and understanding everything that might make you
a good change agent could take several lifetimes—and in the meantime
these folks want the world to hold still or wait until they are ready. This
is falling prey to what Sartre called, the “liberty of indifference.” Let the
world be damned until I fashion myself accordingly—and this whole idea
of self-fashioning reeks to me of too much emphasis on autoplasticity, a
bit like Foucault’s practice of the self—forging individual identity out of
the conflictual social relations of power/knowledge, and at the most re-
sisting being made into a docile, compliant subject. And maybe there is
an echo of this in Saint Augustine’s wayward prayer, Lord make me pure
but not yet! (When I was a doctoral student in Toronto, I audited a class
with Foucault, and while I was giving him a tour of some of the best book-
stores in the city, I asked him his opinion of Toronto and he replied—“it’s
not decadent enough for me.” He was brilliant, a wonderful teacher, but
I couldn’t find a hint of any politics of transcendence in his work). I don’t
think you can change the world only to suit yourself, that is, to suit your
idiosyncracies, needs and desires—you need to take into consideration
the needs of the people, all of their basic needs for food, shelter, dignity,
health. And course, what is “basic” in terms of basic needs is also a rela-
tive term. While we can’t stop the continuum of history, we can certainly
put up a roadblock, perhaps evening hiding ourselves away in the cave of
Adullam with a band of renegades to give ourselves a better understand-
ing of the bias against the poor in today’s social universe so that we can
submit ourselves to a political disposition, one revolutionary enough to
embrace a politics of emancipation. I have written recently on Christian
communism, and made a case for “comrade Jesus” and for Marx’s sympa-
thy for some of the gospels (not surprisingly, and quite rightly, he was an-
90
all, the winds that flow within the self sometimes come from other, less
commodity-driven worlds—is this not part of our divine entelechy? Cap-
italists prefer to hide behind their innocent and guileless minds, claim-
ing that they remain untouched by the unctuous urges that affect so
many persons of power. After all, who would want to belong to a cabal
that thrives upon aggressively exploiting workers? I hear a lot from liberals
and fellow Catholics that in order to change the world we need to change
ourselves. In one sense this is self-evident sophomoric advice. But may-
be the best way of changing ourselves is working to change the society—
beginning with action and then reflecting upon such action. We need to
avoid an antiseptic cleavage here, between self and society. Some students
and colleagues, have, over the years, told me that they won’t be ready to
change the world until they’ve mastered the classics in sociology, psychol-
ogy, pedagogy, political theory, etc. Well, the word ‘master’ is relative, but
the task of reading and understanding everything that might make you
a good change agent could take several lifetimes—and in the meantime
these folks want the world to hold still or wait until they are ready. This
is falling prey to what Sartre called, the “liberty of indifference.” Let the
world be damned until I fashion myself accordingly—and this whole idea
of self-fashioning reeks to me of too much emphasis on autoplasticity, a
bit like Foucault’s practice of the self—forging individual identity out of
the conflictual social relations of power/knowledge, and at the most re-
sisting being made into a docile, compliant subject. And maybe there is
an echo of this in Saint Augustine’s wayward prayer, Lord make me pure
but not yet! (When I was a doctoral student in Toronto, I audited a class
with Foucault, and while I was giving him a tour of some of the best book-
stores in the city, I asked him his opinion of Toronto and he replied—“it’s
not decadent enough for me.” He was brilliant, a wonderful teacher, but
I couldn’t find a hint of any politics of transcendence in his work). I don’t
think you can change the world only to suit yourself, that is, to suit your
idiosyncracies, needs and desires—you need to take into consideration
the needs of the people, all of their basic needs for food, shelter, dignity,
health. And course, what is “basic” in terms of basic needs is also a rela-
tive term. While we can’t stop the continuum of history, we can certainly
put up a roadblock, perhaps evening hiding ourselves away in the cave of
Adullam with a band of renegades to give ourselves a better understand-
ing of the bias against the poor in today’s social universe so that we can
submit ourselves to a political disposition, one revolutionary enough to
embrace a politics of emancipation. I have written recently on Christian
communism, and made a case for “comrade Jesus” and for Marx’s sympa-
thy for some of the gospels (not surprisingly, and quite rightly, he was an-
90
