Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1996 10:23:24 -0400 (EDT)
From: Tom Blancato <tblan-AT-telerama.lm.com>
Subject: Re: Educational Practice & Nomad Philosophy



Someone wrote to me privately as well, so I'll just post some thoughts on 
the list. Proviso: I am a *very bad Deleuzian*, having read next to 
nothing and never having tried the thick stuff. I don't know what a BwO 
is, and I'm not sure I want to know. I don't like hiding and I don't like 
secrets. I like the rhizomatic metaphors (if they are metaphors at all), 
the tuber stuff, anti-arboriality, etc. This rhizomes into "text" 
(textile, thread, weave) for me, and, hence, Derrida (and vice versa). I 
have minimal requirements:

The ground has to be "nonviolent thoughtaction". This works out in the 
weaving very powerfully. Thoughtaction is the activated differe(a)nce 
between thought and action, and nonviolence is taken as an independent 
thematic-substantive. Nonviolence is seen as an alienated, driving issue 
throughout most continental/postmodern, etc., discourses. I.e., 
liberation is sought as a confrontation with violences, variously. For 
some reason, geting straight with this is important (in this weave). 
Nonviolence has to be owned up to as "standing in the possibility of 
violence", and the Tarentino-style (read: Nietzsche, Bataille, etc.) 
"solutions" are not adequate.

The "procedure" I'd want to pursue in considering *very practical steps* 
would be to "start the weave" of nonviolent thoughtaction. Some points:

The "thought" of "thoughtaction" is very broad and inclusive of what is 
meant by "thought" in some common ("european thought", "the thought of 
Deleuze and Guattari", "the thought of Derrida") and developed ("What is 
Called Thinking"/"Discourse on Thinking", philosophy as *thinking*, 
thought) senses. One is not "getting it" if one doesn't grasp this fully 
range (infinitized) of "thought". The breadth of "thought" in this regard 
is essential for grounding an educational project with sufficient 
freedom, openings, etc. There is some issue of "competence to found" 
which has some requirements. In other words, people setting up and 
maintaining an "institution" (more on this word below) have to meet 
minimal requirements for being what I tend to call "groundspeople". They 
have to have some comptence and exposure that enables them to appreciate 
and see the way clear to maintain this broad sense of thought, and also 
action.

The "action" is also similarly broad/infinitized, having resonances and
associations with "power", "politics", "activism", "taking action",
"praxis", "practice", "doing", etc. The senses are *what we already take
for these words*. The accomplishment of "thoughtaction"  (note resonation
with "power/knowledge" a la Foucault) as such happens when one really does
stand in the activated difference between the two, when they are
interactive, intersubmissive, co-constitutional, either synthetically or
deconstructively as *already being intersubmitted*, even if they often try
to deny this. To grasp this means to shake very underway and often quite
personal foundations of one's standing in the academy or in
action/activism, etc. 

Thoughtaction is a kind of clarification, not a superimposed term, not so 
much a "new" thing, but a waxing and waning opening, transparency, 
accomplishment, clarification, assertion, gesture, space, etc.

Nonviolence comes in as the basic moral grounding. This is very 
irritating to people. Very irritating. Generally, nonviolence here means 
non-naive nonviolence: nontotalistic, with a full sense for/of 
adjudicated violence. I.e., Gandhian nonviolence: someone is raping your 
mother, you hit him on the head with a brick. But the fully play of what 
is meant by nonviolence is there. A whole range of things. Non-vengeance, 
for example. Vengeance is very dear to the hearts of many. I won't have 
anything to do with it. I think it's an illusion: it only seems 
satisfying, but it never gives you what you think you're getting, only 
illusion. It is rape. There are numerous implications. The 
weaving/unfolding logics of nonviolence take me a bit of time and are 
utterly related, *equiprimordially*, to thoughtaction. 

The issue with nonviolence is simply this: if you want to get to 
"action", and you can't do the kind of education we're talking about 
without *standing in action* in certain ways, you more or less have to 
open up and be committed to nonviolence, or else you end up with what we 
usually end up with: "theoretical" discourses propounding various forms 
of violence which *people simply generally can not act on*. Nonviolence 
in the strong/positive sense denotes not the simple absence of violence, 
but the *general orientation of engagement that is cognizant of the 
problem of violence, is oriented against violence as a fundamental 
vocation, etc.* Here I strongly hold that for the most part where there 
is action, generally it must and even will don the clothes of 
nonviolence, even if it does so begrudgingly. The point here is not to do 
so begrudgingly, but to own up to this fact in order to be able to get on 
with things freely and more directly. There are all sorts of associated 
issues and logics to deal with concerning the assumptions that people 
have about nonviolence, its tendency to take violent and naive forms, etc.

Narrower forms of thoughtaction, incidently, include some existing 
educational paradigms: participatory action reserach and service learning.

Associated with this, and opening up into some more practical aspects is
what I call "reverse deconstruction": enstruction, enconstruction,
verstruction. The development of an 'academy' (and the word "academy"
probalby has to go) would be an *enstructional* movement/gesture. But
nonviolence has to be mentioned. Again and again. You can't get
"structure" as such unless a systematic theoretical distance is constantly
maintained, a distance from the other, etc., which of course necessitates
sooner or later "deconstruction". Which can be ok, or not ok, depending.
If you want to "ride the slash" between theory and practice, then the
"structure" of construction is de-structured into a more essentially
political condition, and that means justice and the gravity of the
possibility of violence. Reiterating a bit: the "structure" of "struction"
(con/de/en) is a specifically impersonal/objectifying
operation/accomplishment. To open *out* of the "structural" as such means
an opening to the other. With Levinas, the relation to the other is
justice. For me, justice is nonviolence, precisely, just as for Levinas
injustice is violence. If you get out of structure, then you have to deal
with violence. This is where I part company with Deleuze, to some extent
(don't worry, he's still there in "thought"). "Intensities": this is not
too great, I think. It's predicated on a somewhat metaphysical (not that
there's anything wrong with that! hehe) orientation which I think markes
an intrinsic weakness in Deleuze's thought, which closes the possibilities
of freely and viably developing what is in question here, and what is
often implied in Deleuzian thought. One way of putting this is that if
Deleuze and Guattari's unamended thought were amenable to development of
alternative education it would have spawned more by now. 

So, you get this ground down, then start dealing. Since nonviolent
thoughtaction is *already* between thought and action, you find that
you're always already in the vicinity of action, in action, and of
responsibility (nonviolence). We would be looking not for an act of
"instituting", but of *enstituting* or something like that. Ideally, the
"en-" bears withinitself something of the "nonviolence", although this
wish to be relieved of thinking nonviolence independently (a wish which is
everywhere in most western thought and institutions) really deserves some
serious scrutiny. And this would give us a clue for what to call the
project. I.e., if it were to develop well, it would *emerge* out of this
kind of grounding. A certain "enstitution". The "thinking" part can of
course grasp what the history of the "institution", and the gesture if
"institution" means for what is understood in the traditional academy. 
But the thinking is impotent and even incompenent if it is not engaged in
action and does not own up to the action it is engaged in. Nor, since I
mention the word "traditional" should we be understanding this idea as
"anti-tradition" or "non-traditional". That is where most of the best
intentions founder, after all. It is not free and able when it's in that
dreary/crippled revolutionary gesture. And it doesn't *work*. Hah. 

This doesn't open up practical issues like grading and hierarchy,
teachers, etc. Generally, here is where I go with this stuff. The
simple/total reversal is no good. "No grades!" This is hopeless. The
enstructional take on grades would be to *play with them*, variously to
use them, to turn on them, de- and reconstruct them, *think* them
*subtantively*, submit them to their conditions of action, their standing
in the possibility of violence. So such an enstitution could both grade
more and less, and by turns ironically and "delighteningly" (a word I use
for what is like irony structurally but does not have its particular
valence). The same goes for leading: the thoughtaction of leading is that
*there is leadership* all over the place, in various ways. I lead as I
write this and you follow simply in order to read it, etc. When this is
owned up better, than the problems of *leadership* as *teaching* are owned
up to and can be broken apart. There are various positive *submissions*,
aspeects of discipleship, etc., and these simply can not be thrown away. 

Another aspect I would consider primary is the self-submission of the 
enstitution: that is, the enstution would be studying itself, submitting 
itself to itself, in various ways. Meta-educational reserach, etc., and 
that all goes with the territory.

Well, I'll leave off here,

Tom B.

On Tue, 8 Oct 1996, Mr Christopher McMahon wrote:

> Very serious. My wife and I have even presented a paper on this subject, 
> and I submitted a paper reworking Lacan's 4 discourses in s Deleuzian
> way to a journal earlier this year (havn't heard back since). As to how
> "good"? I'm just a humble PhD stdent so probably quite "bad" really. I do
> have
> 9 yrs teaching exp. in 2ndry & Tert. I would definitely like to hear your
> views. By "original" I really am looking for any ideas that we really have
> not tried or thought of before. Also, I am more interested in practical
> ways of entering into
> negotiations with the academy, and only slightly less interested in trying
> to envisage a "nomadic" (schiz &/or hysterical) academy.
> As I said, most of the practices we are exploring and reconsidering have
> been around for ages. Really new regimes are rare. Anarchism is
> attractive - but most utopian/dystopian ed-anarchies seem to me to be
> little more then negations. Strategies which can work in various
> assembleges (mix & match) or even in isolation (ie: transportable) -
> this sort of thing seems to be more workable at present, seeing as we
> don't have the credibility or funding to set up our own academy and/or
> set of academic protocols. We are also sort of
> suspicious of self-access nomadism which remain thoroughly prescriptive
> but are just as suspicious of the Ludites.
> 
> 
> On Mon, 7 Oct 1996, Tom Blancato wrote:
> 
> > 
> > I have a whole "theory" or thoughtpractice that works for this 
> > desideratum. How serious are you? And how good are you?
> > 
> > Tom B.
> > 
> > On Mon, 7 Oct 1996, Paul Bains wrote:
> > 
> > > >Does anybody have any really original ideas on non-fascist ed-space?
> > > >This is a genuine enquiry.
> > > 
> > > a 'non-fascist ed-space' would be for starters one which was not compulsory
> > > and had no grading. The school of humanities at the university of
> > > technology, sydney has had for many years a pass/fail degree. This is a step
> > > in the right direction. Altho to get a grant for a higher degree the
> > > students are thereby penalised. 
> > > 
> > > Most interesting ed-spaces have no courses that are completed. There is a
> > > huge amount of stuff on all this, mainly american (60/70/80's - e.g.
> > > illich). As was suggested recently in the Sydney Morning Herald,  student
> > > life has become indistinguishable from work experience in a corporate
> > > environment. I am v. pessimistic about anything interesting happening within
> > > a university environment - except by fluke.
> > > 
> > > A genuine response.  
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > 
> > __________________________________________________________________________
> > 
> > "The sanctions are not spectacular, and operate slowly, but they kill and
> > maim as remorselessly as bullets and bombs, and are destroying a
> > generation of Iraqi children." Brad Lyttle, delegation to Iraq member. 
> > 
> > "The characteristics of the treatment that caused people to be outraged
> > and shocked are now kind of masked so that the procedure looks rather
> > benign," said New York psychiatrist Hugh L. Polk.
> > 
> > As many permutations of molecules used in making psychiatric drugs can be 
> > developed today in 2 hours as used to take a lifetime for a researcher.
> > __________________________________________________________________________
> > 
> > 
> 
> 

__________________________________________________________________________

"The sanctions are not spectacular, and operate slowly, but they kill and
maim as remorselessly as bullets and bombs, and are destroying a
generation of Iraqi children." Brad Lyttle, delegation to Iraq member. 

"The characteristics of the treatment that caused people to be outraged
and shocked are now kind of masked so that the procedure looks rather
benign," said New York psychiatrist Hugh L. Polk.

As many permutations of molecules used in making psychiatric drugs can be 
developed today in 2 hours as used to take a lifetime for a researcher.
__________________________________________________________________________