tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post707644668865840609..comments2024-03-11T02:18:33.966-05:00Comments on Kritik: Dan Colson, "Teaching in the Panopticon"Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13200566567765991464noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-13241939551535575312010-04-06T00:36:00.952-05:002010-04-06T00:36:00.952-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.John Randolphhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17637552603439716233noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-70512497754516357302010-04-05T20:21:00.762-05:002010-04-05T20:21:00.762-05:00I think it would be quite interesting to read with...I think it would be quite interesting to read with prison inmates some of the texts that I read with students here in one of my big lecture courses. I would value the inmates responses to such texts as Thoreau's defense of John Brown; Bakunin's critique of the state; Max Stirner's critique of bourgeois property law. I am not entirely sure that my aims in teaching these texts would be different, which are basically what Dan describes as teaching transgressively, but I am pretty sure I would get a very different response from inmates (which means, to put it bluntly, I would actually get a response). The inmates might actually see what's at stake in the readings for their authors. My students here, by and large, have too little experience to recognize how writing can be a passionate expression of transgression.Bruce Rosenstocknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-24337566476350214572010-04-05T18:50:03.987-05:002010-04-05T18:50:03.987-05:00GX: "The collasping of the distinctions betwe...GX: "The collasping of the distinctions between the university and the prison does inmates violence. " Did the author actually collapse any distinctions? Here's what he wrote: "Though I admit that teaching in a prison is much different from teaching in a university, it raises the question of transgression or disruption as a pedagogical goal. The prison-classroom contains transgressive subjects subsequently inscribed as “criminal,” while the university contains potentially transgressive subjects who wish to be inscribed as “educated persons.” What to do with this lesson in these two settings is a persistent challenge." That doesn't sound like collapsing distinctions, does it?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-66938091032656336812010-04-05T18:16:55.005-05:002010-04-05T18:16:55.005-05:00The collasping of the distinctions between the uni...The collasping of the distinctions between the university and the prison does inmates violence. Inmates are hardly the principle of their own subjection per Foucault's formulation. Teaching pales in comparison to the specificity of being incarcerated, or living as a criminal, what Foucault once described as a coup d' etat below, and the racial economy that it entails.Gilberto Rosashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16910779607038578142noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-242063045131290982010-04-05T18:08:38.910-05:002010-04-05T18:08:38.910-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.Gilberto Rosashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16910779607038578142noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-7672414195038499932010-04-05T16:01:50.052-05:002010-04-05T16:01:50.052-05:00Dear Don Colson,
I admire what you do, but I conf...Dear Don Colson,<br /><br />I admire what you do, but I confess that I am not convinced by your own theorization of what you do. You write: "While I recognized that such a position might make some uncomfortable, I argued that transgressing discourses of legality is not entirely distinct from transgression against other knowledge regimes," and this position does indeed make me feel uncomfortable, but I suspect that the reasons for my discomfort are different from the ones you imagined when you wrote that sentence. Transgressing knowledge regimes has been part of our notion of modernity since Kant wrote that Enlightenment is sapere audere, daring to know. As Kant suggested, the promise of such act of transgression was supposed to be the freedom of the subject, freedom from self imposed minority. If there is a connection between the prison and the university, where one transgression lands you in prison and the other in the suburbs, however, is that transgressing knowledge regimes does not give you freedom in either cases, but in very different ways. Since the 80s, we have been encouraged to "think different" and to fight against big brother by the very corporations that have replaced the old monoculture of the fordist factory. While the revolts of the 60s and 70s brought down the old forms of social control on campus and in the factory, the "disruption" that we teach does not seem to disrupt a lot. The best proof of this is, after all, that the students of the 60s, as Foucault was fond to say, risked to go to jail; today we try to transform prisoners into students. Perhaps, the difference is in the difference between transgression and revolt. The breaking of rules and the refusal of rules. Since the Enlightenment, transgressing rules has been the engine of what capitalism has defined as progress.Nobody bends rules as well as financial capitalism. The refusal to contribute to the progress of society, instead, might land you in jail. Conflating the two might boost our egos, but let's face it: we are not going to go to jail for it because the new university that produces subjectivities and teach to think different creates better workers for the new immaterial production, not its alternative.Manuelnoreply@blogger.com