APOLOGIA I factor-in, invite & welcome much that’s banished as misfortune in sanitary classrooms: Indeterminacy, Uncertainty, Stochastic Process, Muddle & Mess, Constellational Confusion & Chaos as well as Random- to-Order Ratios & Unpredictable Improvident Free Play and Loose Ends. Daemons appropriately suppressed in normal course-load-bearing classrooms where Order reigns & nurtures Clarity Uber Alles so as to get r done, cover ground, meet measurable objectives, take the credit and run. A student came in to ask what’s the point of HONORS? I like talking about literature but not researching it— looking stuff up to see what other people say. I may drop Honors for a minor in creative writing: what do you think? I was thinking need I make my academics strong? More or less challenging? engaging? How? More readings? More quizzes & papers? Stringent rigor? Raise the bar?. Pedagogical questions. Necessary. Ratcheting up for excellence in these days of economic distress and uncertainty. . Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world - in order to set up a shadow world of “meanings.” Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, comformable. (Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation”) (The opposite is also true. We might could wonder about ratios -- or as the students like to tell me: BALANCE, Sam,. its all about BALANCE.)
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 11:48:05 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015