Textual Harrassmental Studies & Leadership Programs

   Courses Without Borders Series (cont.)

             

Dear Dialecticians, American Literati,  Readers in
the Humanities, and, always, Colleagues Across
the Curriculum:
                
                  Prelude  II
         PLACE on the one hand
  ON THE ROAD on the other hand.   
 
“To be in a particular town or city is to
to be situated;  to be on the road is to
be between situations and not, therefore,
orientated in the ways that situations
orient us.” (Lewis Hyde: The Trickster
                                       Makes the World)
 
“Cleverness is more valuable
than inflexibility. “ Theogonis.
 
“Imagination counts more
than knowledge”  (Einstein)
 
Every kid with a laptop is as smart
as the smartest kid in class so it's
not what I know that counts but
whether I can put it in play.
   
                       ****
  
            Textual Harassment
 
Let me claim for the sake of argument that we are
perps & victims of  ongoing textual harassment
worthy of the t-shirt collection strung out on a
campus clothes line to signify gang & acquaintance
rape called institutionalized hire education.
 
You don't like my analogy?
Abduction?
Metaphor?
Manner of speaking?
Comparison & Contrast?
Overstatement? Generalization? 
We can argue then—or what's a college for?
 
YOU characterize it your way: your in-school,
grade-gun regulated, take the credit-&-run,
wishing for a snow day,  can't wait for the
weekend, fall break, winter, spring, sum
sum summertime and I'm out of here..
 
A cultural relativity: our industrialized education:
conventional as  clitorectomies, binding feet, 
full-body scans & tattoos, bicycle & rollerskate
helmets, driver education, breathalyzers & other
deep grammar collective habits & assumptions
like water for chocolate, indoor plumbing, shaking
hands,  holding  the door open for old people I take
for granted so nurturing it feels like nature..      . 
   
                   TEXTING
 
What's the difference between a text and
a context? I'm asking . Turn it up. Polarize.
Put it in play:
 
Taylor Text and Carlo Context collide at the
crossroads, say. They repair to Do Drop Inn
for beer and a cigarette  waiting for Politically
Correct Polite Police tocome  sort it out—their
differences..
 
Imagine the conversation.  Would it be mutual,
reciprocal back & forth: T Text and C. Context
just getting along? Or would one dominate, the
other submit as is  often the case in relationship?
 
(Mythologic: reifying and personifying abstract
noggin notions, manifesting and embodying so
as to entertain—put in play. The play's the thing!)
 
We do this all the time. Necessarily make abstract
concrete and concrete abstract. Texts and Contexts:
you tell me which dominates, where you pay your
efficient attentive tuition & which by default is an
attention deficit dys-ease?   .
 
        Figure/Background relationships.
       Textual /Contextual  relationships.
 
My courses presume to reverse the dynamic.
Background  becomes Figure. Context becomes
Text. WE are the subject-object of my courses.
The texts are tokens—not what they say  but
what we say they say as well as what we
say about what we say they say that counts.
That really counts. Need we argue? 
 
It’s an environmental issue.
 
Contextual rather than textual harassment:
harassment either way, true? Always an
ongoing  criminal violation of the whole
and holy. It's the denial and cover-up that
generates the psychic toxic waste and
thickens the bozone layer, know what I'm
saying?
 
      Damaged & damaging if I do.
     Damaged & damaging if I don't.
 
  You got a problem with that. Too?
Maybe you reckon you do justice to both
         background and figure,
           context and text.
In which case: you may not be every one.
In which case these courses are for you.
 
It’s a sustainability concern.

xxxooo, Sam