by and of Maxwell Clark
I am rather unfamiliar with academia. I much prefer
learning for myself, if you will---and if you will also pardon perhaps the naïveté
of this affirmation I have just put forward ("I much prefer learning for
myself..."), or its appearance as such thus far as this has gone. This,
indeed, seems the only way I ever learn, that is, when I do so for myself;
rather than for, or under, the rule of any ruling academic authorities. It
seems, at least, that I must be involved in my own learning somehow for it
actually to be mine at all. If I am not the one doing the learning, then who?
Who learns for me if I do not learn for myself? My academic authorities?
Fortunately, I no longer am privileged to any of that kind of person anymore.
For, if my academic authorities are the ones learning, for me, rather than I
learning for me, for myself, than I may very well doubt I am learning at all
under such authorities as these. Or, how does one learn if not by oneself? One learns from others, of course, in teaching, of course. Thus, the interposition of academic
authorities in between myself and my own learning, and, so, also, their own
learning apart from mine, as authorities and/or learners unto themselves, finds
its justification, or justice, in being done for me (if only maybe sometimes, in the best of circumstances), if
you will, or as teaching. Who would
ever deny this? Yet who also can defend that the teachers, then (and to stumble upon a more felicitous term here
than "academic authorities"), somehow, do not interrupt, but substitute their learning---which is
actually also embodied in -- or as -- themselves (or corporeally, then)---substitute it for my learning, as I am corporeally embodied in
actuality as myself? I am not my
others, much less the Other---I am myself alone. Yet,
still, they (others) teach me. I cannot yet doubt this, or do not yet doubt this, except in the most the over-reconstrictedly (excuse), or orthodoxly Cartesian way---which is more on the register of fancy herein than
conviction---I only protest that somehow,
maybe---or, make that assuredly?---in some way I will never persuasively, much
less really, know, how this said substitution (and this key term far more to be read in terms of
embodiment than with that of knowledge, if only just for me) of the teacher for their student, is even possible, or desirable? Is
teaching even assuredly so---as it is so far said above (as sort of a vaguely so far defined as a "substitution of embodiments",
academic or otherwise)? Further, but also as a sort of aside---as it continues what
was just before closed-off between the immediately foregoing parentheses ending
the sentence before this---if teaching is delineated, as it were, and as so far as it is herein, on the
register of the bodies which perform it, and, if this said (or tentatively-posed?) corporeality of teaching is further taken as a salient paradigm (if only
insofar as it is so, or otherwise, for you, my dear audiences)---and, if perhaps then also only more or less---if this is then accepted to "function" (although my conviction is already waning at this somewhat awry term) "through" (or mayhap, rathermore, or also: "within", or "about", "by",
"as", or "whatever else have you..."---prepositionally, but this is an almost absurdly pleonastic twist of that word---or, that is, more plainly, with especial
regard to my preposition-use at the literary space defined as that immediately
preceding this foregoing open-parenthesis) aforesaid and therein minimally
contextualized, or not very ramified, name of "substitution"? Is this, my conceptuality, good
enough? Or, does it hold good? And, then again, how do I further proceed with
this abrupt introduction, or seemingly sudden foregrounding,
of the ethical---in one among its core, if you
will, or most signature terms: "good"? how? except as aggrieved, or apologetically, as guilty of what I have so far dared to fling out so hastily as I have
in this---whatever it is (that it is). You, my audiences, I ask your forgiveness---whether in each
uniquely individual reading of yours it is ever granted, or no; I can do no more than
that, to ask it of you---and thereafter go on, if still very much uneasily
aggrieved (perhaps even moreso in, or for, the deferral, or, more likely
post-mortem delay, or again, wait, I must suffer for this thing I have so foolishly as such written
here; as it is, before you, and so too almost necessarily before you may ever grant me my/its desired
atonement). To go on then, I return to my afore self-interrogated terminologies
(in brusque: "embodiment" and "substitution") and their
deployments here-above in this text... and, then, I wonder: how does one go on
addressing that other issue which had arisen just before this once before said (as
once also before that too?) self-interrogation of my own usages, which was, but
of course, as it nascent-emerged, again, from those other, even more
anterior, thematic schemas I see and/or recall seeing coalesce within/as this
work? Is it good, again---to deploy again that already (for me) troublesome word---whatever
my somewhat strong inclination to disavow its use herein already---yes, that word which is also
a signal or marker suggesting (or is it imposing?) an ethical register for this document
and your receptions of it---is it, again, then, good that this writing cannot seem but to
"implode" back in upon itself the moment it affirms anything? Why
even affirm anything then, or as such, if I am simply going to recant each of any
of those affirmations at some place in their afterwards? In order simply
to recant it? That is, affirm for the sake of recantation? What then is the attraction of such ritualistic recantation to
me? To slip then back into my ominous habit of affirmation, then, is it not
that I emulate Plato's Socrates when he affirms in the Apology (and elsewhere, I believe) that his only knowledge is that
he knows nothing. And, then, does recantation---which is, or is it "not", the same
as negation? (I, then, maybe foolishly, as too abrupt, and so as ever and again,
tend to suggest it is otherwise than identical with negation as above brought
into issue)---lie like a seed, if you will, within the body, if you will, of
each and---only thus---every affirmation? And is this writing not becoming but
an incessant tissue of unanswered inquiries? Is not that then how to write something
while still knowing nothing? By having no answers? Is questioning (even) a form
of knowledge, put otherwise, and if only perhaps? Or, isn't questioning a form of the absence of knowledge? as then also its soliciting, or the calling forth of knowledge itself then too? A knowledge to come, then, and which, in the meanwhile, is again---if to mince
one's words very precisely, or over-precisely, mayhaps---absent from its discourse?
