Undoing Education

Let's face it. We're undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something... One does not always stay intact. It may be that one wants to, or does, but it may also be that despite one's best efforts, one is undone, in the face of the other[.]

Judith Butler, Undoing Gender.

Butler has come to save me, as she always does, when I am in trouble. She speak of ourselves being undone, to be made unwhole, so as to find again the semblance of purpose to our lives. The "I" is always dismembered by grief, by depression, by dispossession (of rights?), and by the hegemonic flow of power. To call oneself whole is oxymoronic; the self is always undone by itself and others.

I am ecstatic. It may seem ridiculous to be happy at such a time, in such a milieu of legal trouble, intellectual rights, ethics of privacy, and morals of knowledge. But I am ecstatic by undoing and being undone by education. As Butler explains, "To be ec-static means, literally, to be outside oneself, and this can have several meanings: to be transported beyond oneself by a passion, but also to be beside oneself with rage or grief (2004, p. 20)." The ecstacy of being a teacher is always complicated by the corporeal bodies of knowledge that ruptures the ideological certainty of any learner. Ecstacy occurs only at the point of being undone; of being taken out to the shooting range with a gun to our heads. At such a time and circumstance, the question of identity explodes beyond the boundaries of comfort. It is in such a place and time of being undone that we are angry, manic, uncertain, and ecstatic.

Do I wish again for such an experience? Do I wish again for a student to find me, mangle me, and undo me from the system? Perhaps. There is never certainty in learning. It is part of the perks of being a teacher.

At any moment, the one thing in which we fear most will come hauting us, will be beside us, asking for recognition and demanding attention. Look at your malin genie and be ec-static. It is the best you can do. And when you are finally undone by your passion to education and by your grief and anger at education, then we will suture again the ruptures of identity. You and I will learn to be a teacher again.

I have been rooted out

I have been rooted out. Interesting. Remember my last post on World View Prejudice? A student of the unit actually found this blog and filed a complaint to my department. There is no need to rehearse the implications of this act. My initial reaction was shock. How the hell did that student manage to find me? Am I that Googlable? It is a very interesting situation. My department has asked that I censor all that links to the university and the course unit. That was, of course, mentioned in the blog heading: Guide to Practicing Independent Learning. I have also been advised that any indication to the person that I criticised should be deleted. This is indeed an interesting situation.

I am pissed-off at being rooted out. This blog was never meant to meet the eyes of anyone that did not have an interest in my writing. It was never to meet any eyes that did not care about education. It was never to meet any eyes that I did not anticipate seeing. I was a foolish bastard.

Here is a space of contemplation, of madness, of the carnivalesque dance of language and schizophrenia. Here is a demense of affectivities that are never justifiable under the standards of social acceptance. Here is where one is free to be the son-of-a-bitch, the jack-ass, the fool, and the bastard that everyone loves, and the prick that everyone hates. In this hyperspace of significations are tantrums and fits of delusion. It is my space. Who the fuck has the right to tell me what to say and what not to say?

The institution has that right. Bodies never have such rights, only disembodied eidolons have the power to discriminate. For the institution is finally an illusion made real, it is a phantasm of our fantasies and desire for order and law. Thus it is set into the codes and standards of meaning; the institution becomes the wraith that sucks the life out of our identities, our corporeal subjectivities. We fear the institution; we fear with our lives that it would make us disappear. Hegemony enables the organisation of disembodied monsters to rule and censor creativity. This fiend with a heated maw breathes in our imagination, always cautioning that we do not transgress - always to censor our thoughts.

I am afraid to disappear. I am afraid to meet the breath of the institution.

I have censored myself.

Ironic isn't it?

Expunged

I have been away for a while - to collect myself. I am, at the moment, in pieces. Floudering in a sea of information, of work, of trouble. You see, I am a vampire. I do not normally sleep before 6am and neither do I wake before 4pm. Now I wake before 9am and sleep at 1pm. It is unnatural. It is just plain unnatural.

I have been writing a play in conjunction to my ridiculous teaching workload and my research and also my part-time job as a HR manager for this company called 3minuteangels. I feel so drained. There is so little that I can do in only so many hours. It is times like these that I question the aetiology of an accelerated culture.

The exponential demands of our culture needs speed and efficiency. Everyone demands the quick release of desire and the quick satiation of affectivities. To be part of this matrix of information is to siphon oneself into the liquidated current of bodies that flow at increasing flux towards competence, productiveness, incisiveness and exactitude. This accelerated culture thus forms what Virrilio calls the aesthetic of disappearance. We hope to annihilate the physical properties and aggregates that mar the path to become prosthetic gods. To be Gods of Information, Gods of Knowledge, Gods of Efficiency, and Gods of Virtual Invinsibility; this becoming is the focal point of entropy. We are collapsing upon one another for there is nothing left to destroy along that path to power and omnipresence. When our technology warps time and space to fit the increasing demands of velocity and expedition, we have the causation of an accelerated culture. When bodies flounder, as I do, in the garbage of responsibilities that declares "Do or Perish", then you have the effect of an accelerated culture - corpses in the wake of capitalist progress.

Here we have the foundation of dying. Here is the base in which we lay the coffins next to each other, each with its own special inscription. At the corner of the eye one could see the protruding side of Jarrah wood with the chiselled note: "Rest". It is a simple proclamation. Ask yourself this: when was the last time in which the word "rest" resonated through your entire being? Restfulness, resting, and rested have reached a finality - the death of meaning. The second coffin with a fresh layer of dust on its edge had a similar engraving: "Power". The sole purpose of knowledge is to fuel the batteries of our bodies so that we may liquidify our awkward form and thus flow uninhibited in the capitalist preconditions of survival. In this coffin - one of many, many thousands - strikes a paradox. The entropic law of the universe simply states that the more energy that one exercises, the faster the systemic rate of decomposition. The more we exercise power, the faster we nail our own coffin.

In this cathartic splurge of disatisfaction, I realise that I have already engraved the testimonial of my own coffin. Perhaps it is best that I do it now than later. One never knows if there is still a form left by the end of the burn-out. So even if the coffin remains empty, it would still serve as a reminder of my idiocy. On top of my coffin are the marked words: "Expunged".