October 22, 2015 - 11:26
I.
We had a great discussion of the Socrates Cafes on which I will soon prepare some general comments to "googledoc." One theme that has stayed with me: how the space was saturated with power relationships that were, in a sense, contradictory: many of us felt out of place and as if we did not have equal influence over the conversation; at the same time, however, many of the non-360 folks acted and spoke as if they were intimidated by us, suggesting that they saw us as in control of the space. How can we deal with these conflicting perceptions? What would have been a better way to structure such a conversation to resist the assumptions (and feelings of powerlessness) on both sides?
II.
Experimental essays by Julia, Rhett, Tong, and Sylvia raised some important questions for us to continue to consider as we start to envision arts of freedom for today.
1. Privilege and unfreedom. Julia's poem called attention to habituated or embodied forms of prejudice that stem from various positions of privilege (not just racial and economic but also educational and institutional). How can we resist these forms of unfreedom? How can we free ourselves from these individual and yet strutural birdcages?
2. Discourses of freedom. Rhett's Socrates Cafe prompted us to reflect on the different kind of discourse attainable in the space of Dalton 119 with our class assembled -- and thus to reflect on how we might fail to listen or to speak in ways that feel authentic or craft the best consensus about topics such as freedom. Put in a different way: How does our discourse (and our ability to participate in a discourse) emerge from the particular power structures that contain it? How (if at all) can we challenge or change those structures?
3. Equity and freedom. Tong returned us to issues in Michelle Alexander's book about the unequal experience of freedom in a society where periods of unfreedom -- i.e. incarceration -- can shadow subsequent "freedom." Tong led us to ask how society can change this fact and how Michelle Alexander's focus on black men may come up short when dealing with the prison-industrial complex and its role especially in areas of economic disadvantage. What political responses might address these challenges? How do we deal with the competing interests of liberation from the prison industrial complex and the people and communities it supports?
4. Citizenship and freedom. Sylvia connected Claudia Rankine and Michelle Alexander by having us reflect again on the meanings of citizenship and how our definitions have changed. We talked about how citizenship as a general term hides various forms of exclusion: economic second-class citizenship; the disadvantages of "hyphenated citizenship"; the experience of non-citizens. Is citizenship still worth talking about? What alternative do we have for mobilizing solidarity to confront political problems?
III.
I'd like to connect these themes and questions to some of the issues that arise in Charles Payne's account of the Freedom Struggle as it developed in Mississippi in the early 1960s. We're moving from the theoretical and historical register to the practical, so I think we can start to think and talk about how freedom is realized and thus enacted. As you read Payne, then, consider these questions:
1. What are the arts of freedom invented by SNCC? What kinds of political practices do they involve? Here you might compare SNCC's arts of freedom to those described by Tocqueville -- including juries, the free press, and the township -- as well as those noted by DuBois -- such as federal programs for education and economic equity.
2. What broader political culture do these arts of freedom require? Here you might think about moeurs in Tocqueville, the beliefs that support (or contradict) democratic life. What kind of faith do these activists hold?
3. What constitutes democratic leadership? How does Ella Baker or Fannie Lou Hemer or Robert Moses lead and how might this translate to some of our questions about empowerment both in the Bi-Co and at RCF?
These will be some of the themes of my experimental essay. We’ll start class with some writing about the previous week’s experiences (including follow-up on Alexander, Antigone, and the time in RCF) and then move to a series of activities focused on bridging the first half of the course with the practical arts of freedom to which Payne introduces us.