From Studyplace

[edit] A few thoughts in closing

This page and the links to the right make up the contents of my critical notebook, or the digital shoebox, of thoughts surrounding our seminar. I think that it will take me some time to comprehend and incorporate all of the new ideas and experiences from the Ranciere seminar, but I am certainly glad that I participated and grateful for the opportunity. The readings and related discussions were thoroughly provocative, with Ranciere bolstering some of my current beliefs while offering coherent challenges to others.

The seminar has raised several avenues of thought that I am looking forward to pursuing in greater detail. Especially, I am eager to relate some of Ranciere's writing to the study of technology. For one, I am interested in his idea of symbolic action. In his writing (and in person) he talks about how the double meaning of (some) actions. His writes that a protest against a new tax serves a dual purpose: first, it is meant to abolish the tax, but second it is political in the sense that the protesters are asserting their voice. In terms of technology, I think that certain software systems exhibit this symbolism. Wikipedia, for example, is clearly useful as a compendium of knowledge, but, in Ranciere's terms, I think that its authors are also saying "me too, I'm a scholar." In this area Ranciere poses a challenge for me, as will. Currently my thinking is colored by Gramsci's idea of hegemony; how is software hegemonic? What does counter-hegemonic software look like? And, to a a lesser degree, Bourdieu. Ranciere explicitly refutes Bourdieu, and possibly Gramsci (I need to think and study some more in that area). Ranciere's point, from what I gather, is that people are not fooled by ideology; they are not defined by their habitus. I am inclined to agree with this argument, but need to consider its implication for symbolic action.

The other major channel of inquiry that Ranciere has inspired surrounds his idea of emergence. Clearly, Ranciere mistrusts institutions, but he is also skeptical of leaders of any kind. We see this in the Ignorant Schoolmaster where he highlights Jacatot's reluctance to even lecture, preferring to meet individuals, in his hotel. Emancipation will only spread from one individual to another.

"Emergence" has been a strong buzzword since the early days of the Internet. Large amounts of scholarship have been devoted to the study of networks, how they grow, how information spreads like a contagion. I have been wary of the optimism of emergence on the Internet, though, as it strikes me too much of enthusiasm for the invisible hand of the market. Ranciere has rekindled some of my interest in anarchism, and possibly poses an alternative to viewing emergence as an unfettered marketplace. I would like to follow up the readings that we've done to try to uncover more of Ranciere's views about emergence and the spread of freedom.

These ideas and more are proving useful as I incorporate them into my thinking about my dissertation, and I have plans to work on a paper about Ranciere and technology with a friend this summer. In some ways, though, the greater challenge of the seminar is how to view Ranciere's ideas in terms of my practice as a teacher. It's in this light that his pedagogy is truly "radical". What would happen if I offered my programming students no explanations, no "reduced" examples? Two semesters ago, I employed a watered down version of Universal Teaching in my Programming II class. The only homework, for the entire semester was one large, group project. I assigned myself the role of managing the project, having teams report on their progress. I didn't approach the severity of Jacatot, though. I carefully selected weekly readings, structured the topics of my "mini-lectures" like a good constructivist, and offered code examples that the students could work from. Further, I ran "code reviews" where I critiqued the content of their efforts. Even with this weak version, I have backed away from the technique. The students complained (I know, they always complain), but with some good reasons. The gap was too great between everything they had done before and what I was asking them to do. I now offer weekly homework assignments for the first half of the course and only begin project work in the second half. I also do more review, more explication, and more stultification. Even if I agreed with Universal Teaching, I need to find a way to make it work. I think, in part, this can be done by transparently explaining the approach. "I have nothing to teach you." For better or worse, I am taking the fall term off from teaching, so I won't get to experiment with a more Rancierian technique in the near future.