Course notes for Monday, November 2

I.

To remind you where we've been, here are the notes from last class: /oneworld/arts-resistance/course-notes-monday-october-26. I think we really went deep into many of these questions and I hope we can build on our discussions of the specifics of SNCC as well as more general discussions of freedom, resisting the prison industrial complex, and inequality.

I'm excited to see what you make of Freedom Summer and, in particular, how this event incorporated so many different aspects of the arts of freedom we've discussed, from voting (voter registration) to mass meetings (and songs) to Freedom Schools (and empowerment along the lines of some of the work we've been doing in the jail). Thinking about education and empowerment, I'd like to start with this quote from James Baldwin's "A Talk to Teachers":

"Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience, you must find yourself at war with your society. It is your responsibility to change society if you think of yourself as an educated person."

(This is from "A Talk to Teachers," p. 685 in the Library of America Edition; I've attached a PDF as well.)

How does this prompt you to think about what we've been doing in the jail? Or experiences of education in your own lives?

II.

I don't know how many of you looked at the prose part of my "experimental essay," but I'd like to invite you to respond to it before we turn to this week's essayists. Here's the essay. I'm especially keen to hear your responses to the following:

1. How can historical examples inform or inspire our political visions (if at all)?

2. What would better help us to formulate and bring into being political goals?

 

III.

Our experimental essayists, to whom I'll allot thirty minutes apiece: Rosa, Kieres, Madison, & Tong.

 

IV.

A few closing themes on which I'd like to touch if we have time:

1. What do you make of the connection between personal transformation and social transformation evident in Freedom Summer? Can one really transform personally without social transformation of some kind?

2. And what do you make of the personal price of change? Returning to Baldwin's quote, if education leads to war on society then how can one live well in that society?