Transpedagogy
It has been on my mind for sometime. It's just that I haven't had the guts to write something about it. This blank page - this white void that seems to leech at the very soul of Language - beckons and ingurgitates creativity and thought. One must fight it; one must dare to write and dare to breathe the excesses of signification. For that is the power of literacy.
Transpedagogy is a term that has floated dangerously between the crevices of my thoughts. Always emerging from its clandestine confines in the most inopportune of times. It strikes out like a blade of leaf in a deadly storm. The fine edge of its body graces the skin with such speed and delicacy yet the cut is always deep. Transpedagogy has demanded attention yet I have always refuted its presence. But there are too many bleeding wounds to ignore the wake of its dissatisfaction. I must now write.
I am reminded of Tiresias, the blind fool who attacked the pleasures of eros and, fourteen years later, asked to judge the very same affectivities in which he disrupted. Tiresias, son of Everes and Chariclo, was the most famous soothsayer of Ancient Greece. He envisioned the death of Narcissus in the pool of his own reflection; he cautioned the wrathful vengence of Oedipus so that he would not befoul the grace of his mother; he foresaw the splintered thread of Menoeceus' life but predicted the victory of Eteocles' army. Even in death, Tiresias' shadow strengthened the bonds of mortality for the hero Odysseus. All this and more, Tiresias was a powerful being. But his myth lies not so much in his predictive powers, but in his identity.
It is a misnomer to call Tiresias a man. Here is the story. One day he walked the woods and saw a pair of mating serpents. He struck them both with a stick and changed into a woman. He was confused and did not know what became of him. All the pleasures of womanhood and all the great challenges of the womb became hers to bear. Seven years later Tiresias struck another pair of copulating snakes and changed once again into a man. Re-tranfigured, her desires were again translocated and decentred to that of a man. The pleasures of manhood and all the great challenges of the phallus were his to bear.
Tiresias is an important prelude to the discourse of Transpedagogy because it brings our attention to the transgressive lessons of Eros. The first meets the junction of danger, which asks us to question the significance of ardour and the matrix of power that connects one being to another. In that junction, before the lessons of Transpedagogy, the question asks if desire is seperable from the body; whether the snakes and the voyeur of their pleasures are separable entities? The answer to the question would determine the consequence of one's actions. For Tiresias, his disapproval of the incarnated body of eros disrupted the cynosural centre of his own desires. From a man he transformed into the body of the woman. The price was paid; the danger realised. This danger does not necessarily mean that Tiresias' actions were in one way 'bad' and the other 'good'. The danger of eros at the junction to Transpedagogy is imminent. An imminent danger is one in which there is no escape. It is simply in the act of doing - of constant movement - that would take one from danger. If Tiresias respected the ethics of pleasure and did not transgress with the strike of the stick, he would not know the visceral pleasures of a woman's body nor would he understand the transformative power of transgression. When Tiresias chose to severe the bodily affectivities of those two serpents, his decision should not be judged on the basis of ethics for there were neither rights nor wrongs. Simply the act of doing, of making more possibilities and multiplicities of events and actions be the concern of the Injunction to Transpedagogy.
At the Injunction of Transpedagogy there is one command: Act.
A pedagogy of bodies; a pedagogy of transgression and dissidence cannot be affirmed without first passing through the Injunction of Transpedagogy. This space of action determines the force and power of transpedagogy. At the junction that enjoins both act and theory of pedagogy, one must simply agree that without act there is no theory. I have placed action at the forefront of Transpedagogy to note that even at the epistemic level of learning, it is first and foremost an action. That is to say that even before the reading of the first word, even before the comprehension of the first vowel, one must first Act. I have no space to state here the difference between act and practice but note that the latter is the dialectical compound of both act and theory.
The command of action at the Injunction to Transpedagogy is specifically tied to desire and affectivities. To act desire is to perform the affectivities of the body. Masturbation is one primary example.
Masturbation, like homosexuality and heterosexuality, has an intricate and complex history. ‘Solitary sex’, as Thomas Laqueur said, was determined by ‘all the elements of what was so terribly wrong with masturbation’ and because of its controversial value, solitary sex was ‘widely valued, praised and discussed’. It is worth noting that the masturbator in the late 20th and early 21st century is no longer acknowledged as a sexual identity as the identity has been medically sterilised into a sexual act that relieves hormonal stress. The research conducted on masturbation highlights the historical richness of sexological studies and scientific rationale for this subject known as an onanist or masturbator. The hysterical and pathological culture of the masturbator was explored, almost anthropologically, with the prominent insertion of scientific measures and methods. Such a culture of onanists/masturbators are no longer evident in our present.
By shackling the hand from the orgasmic nodes of pleasure on the body, the first injunction of transpedagogy has been entrapped by the walls of conservatism. The performace of an action, the movement of an action has been cauterised so that it may never know the pleasures of the body. Before the epistemic might of transpedagogy, the ontological force of affective actions must first flow without constraint.
Let us re-invoke Tiresias before the end of this prelude. Through the lessons of her/his morphological identity, the "trans" of pedagogy highlights three important nodes of thought. The first is transgressive action. The primary injunction of Transpedagogy must valorise the dissident powers of performance. The second node before the path to transpedagogy lies in desire. The act might be transgressive but it must be linked to the formation of queer desires. Such abominable, disruptive, deconstructive and unnatural desires must break-through the inimical path of conservatism to reach the third node of Transpedagogy. What is this third node? I don't know. I haven't seen through the veil of madness in which I have just expounded.
I have just re-read my work and found the ravings of a mad cur. I am barking without form or purpose. It is still all unclear to me and I am certain that the next time I re-read this blog, I will spit and curse the odour of this page of scatological catharsis. But it is in such ravings that the journey becomes clear. For after the dissintegration of repression, one may only express without fear of discontent.
Transpedagogy is a term that has floated dangerously between the crevices of my thoughts. Always emerging from its clandestine confines in the most inopportune of times. It strikes out like a blade of leaf in a deadly storm. The fine edge of its body graces the skin with such speed and delicacy yet the cut is always deep. Transpedagogy has demanded attention yet I have always refuted its presence. But there are too many bleeding wounds to ignore the wake of its dissatisfaction. I must now write.
I am reminded of Tiresias, the blind fool who attacked the pleasures of eros and, fourteen years later, asked to judge the very same affectivities in which he disrupted. Tiresias, son of Everes and Chariclo, was the most famous soothsayer of Ancient Greece. He envisioned the death of Narcissus in the pool of his own reflection; he cautioned the wrathful vengence of Oedipus so that he would not befoul the grace of his mother; he foresaw the splintered thread of Menoeceus' life but predicted the victory of Eteocles' army. Even in death, Tiresias' shadow strengthened the bonds of mortality for the hero Odysseus. All this and more, Tiresias was a powerful being. But his myth lies not so much in his predictive powers, but in his identity.
It is a misnomer to call Tiresias a man. Here is the story. One day he walked the woods and saw a pair of mating serpents. He struck them both with a stick and changed into a woman. He was confused and did not know what became of him. All the pleasures of womanhood and all the great challenges of the womb became hers to bear. Seven years later Tiresias struck another pair of copulating snakes and changed once again into a man. Re-tranfigured, her desires were again translocated and decentred to that of a man. The pleasures of manhood and all the great challenges of the phallus were his to bear.
Tiresias is an important prelude to the discourse of Transpedagogy because it brings our attention to the transgressive lessons of Eros. The first meets the junction of danger, which asks us to question the significance of ardour and the matrix of power that connects one being to another. In that junction, before the lessons of Transpedagogy, the question asks if desire is seperable from the body; whether the snakes and the voyeur of their pleasures are separable entities? The answer to the question would determine the consequence of one's actions. For Tiresias, his disapproval of the incarnated body of eros disrupted the cynosural centre of his own desires. From a man he transformed into the body of the woman. The price was paid; the danger realised. This danger does not necessarily mean that Tiresias' actions were in one way 'bad' and the other 'good'. The danger of eros at the junction to Transpedagogy is imminent. An imminent danger is one in which there is no escape. It is simply in the act of doing - of constant movement - that would take one from danger. If Tiresias respected the ethics of pleasure and did not transgress with the strike of the stick, he would not know the visceral pleasures of a woman's body nor would he understand the transformative power of transgression. When Tiresias chose to severe the bodily affectivities of those two serpents, his decision should not be judged on the basis of ethics for there were neither rights nor wrongs. Simply the act of doing, of making more possibilities and multiplicities of events and actions be the concern of the Injunction to Transpedagogy.
At the Injunction of Transpedagogy there is one command: Act.
A pedagogy of bodies; a pedagogy of transgression and dissidence cannot be affirmed without first passing through the Injunction of Transpedagogy. This space of action determines the force and power of transpedagogy. At the junction that enjoins both act and theory of pedagogy, one must simply agree that without act there is no theory. I have placed action at the forefront of Transpedagogy to note that even at the epistemic level of learning, it is first and foremost an action. That is to say that even before the reading of the first word, even before the comprehension of the first vowel, one must first Act. I have no space to state here the difference between act and practice but note that the latter is the dialectical compound of both act and theory.
The command of action at the Injunction to Transpedagogy is specifically tied to desire and affectivities. To act desire is to perform the affectivities of the body. Masturbation is one primary example.
Masturbation, like homosexuality and heterosexuality, has an intricate and complex history. ‘Solitary sex’, as Thomas Laqueur said, was determined by ‘all the elements of what was so terribly wrong with masturbation’ and because of its controversial value, solitary sex was ‘widely valued, praised and discussed’. It is worth noting that the masturbator in the late 20th and early 21st century is no longer acknowledged as a sexual identity as the identity has been medically sterilised into a sexual act that relieves hormonal stress. The research conducted on masturbation highlights the historical richness of sexological studies and scientific rationale for this subject known as an onanist or masturbator. The hysterical and pathological culture of the masturbator was explored, almost anthropologically, with the prominent insertion of scientific measures and methods. Such a culture of onanists/masturbators are no longer evident in our present.
By shackling the hand from the orgasmic nodes of pleasure on the body, the first injunction of transpedagogy has been entrapped by the walls of conservatism. The performace of an action, the movement of an action has been cauterised so that it may never know the pleasures of the body. Before the epistemic might of transpedagogy, the ontological force of affective actions must first flow without constraint.
Let us re-invoke Tiresias before the end of this prelude. Through the lessons of her/his morphological identity, the "trans" of pedagogy highlights three important nodes of thought. The first is transgressive action. The primary injunction of Transpedagogy must valorise the dissident powers of performance. The second node before the path to transpedagogy lies in desire. The act might be transgressive but it must be linked to the formation of queer desires. Such abominable, disruptive, deconstructive and unnatural desires must break-through the inimical path of conservatism to reach the third node of Transpedagogy. What is this third node? I don't know. I haven't seen through the veil of madness in which I have just expounded.
I have just re-read my work and found the ravings of a mad cur. I am barking without form or purpose. It is still all unclear to me and I am certain that the next time I re-read this blog, I will spit and curse the odour of this page of scatological catharsis. But it is in such ravings that the journey becomes clear. For after the dissintegration of repression, one may only express without fear of discontent.
posted by Insouciantfemme at 10:28 pm
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