Occupy This !

Dear Colleagues Across the Curriculum
on Both Sides of the Desk.
 
OCCUPY THIS
 
Steven Pinker, Harvard Neuro-Cognitive
Linguist,  claims that every utterance carries
two agenda (what Gary Hawkins might rightly
link to our “2 Economies Consideration”) :
 
1. Taking Care of Business (TCB) :  pass the salt,
do you know the way to San Jose? what are you
doing to create more jobs? E = MC squared…
whatever
 
and
 
2. Negotiating Relationship (NR) – stroke & status
what amounts to See Me, Hear Me, Touch Me (or don’t).
Feed Me, love me or at least like—or hate then.
 
You can improve my representation, and maybe help
turn up the distinction—between, say, external affairs
and internal affairs (kingdom without; kingdom within:
idios-ness on the one hand;  socios-ness on the other)  
 
Can you imagine presenting a paper to professional
colleagues at some conference in the mid-west,
flying coach and carrying in to O’Hare’s
Holiday Inn laptop and appropriate
software so as to make my
power point performance
and NOT  thinking,
really: more than
any thing,  I hope
they like this?
 
I’m hoping you do right now every day: see me hear me—did
you think this was all a matter of the principle of the thing?
Reforming Higher Education?  Justice?  I’m sitting here.
Occupying. Read my posters!
 
It’s convenient &  conventional & practical to pay my efficient
attention to the Taking Care of Business agenda.  When the
student in  class claims our text sucks,  we consider the text
in this light, debate its accuracy of description & not so much
attend to the context—the sayer, or even more in the background:
the group of sayers saying about the said.
 
Imagine: shifting collective attention from the texts studied to
the context of studiers, from the  token business-at-hand to
the Relationship Negotiating going  on & on: see me, hear me,
touch me, feed me, love,  like or hate.
 
Here I am: signing, sealing, and delivering.
 
Did you think this class was about fiction? Linguistics?  Selected
19^th century American Writers?  Of course it is.  That too.
Always:  emperor’s new clothes.  Bottom line.