bell hooks, Friday 18th December, 2008

Meeting in the newly repaired library at rampART. Still bloody cold but no gales blowing through the room thanks to rampART collective's inspiring tech team. We studied two readings from bell hooks' Teaching to Transgress (chosen by Kirsten) which, together, seemed to make an argument for making connections between theory and teaching practice where an understanding of the politics of race and gender could inform not only the content of pedagogical practice but also the style and delivery. Although, in principal, there was no disagreement with this, we noted that the chapter 'Building a Teaching Community', a dialogue between hooks and Ron Scapp, was written from within a particular historical and cultural context (the US in 1994). This presented us with certain problems, not least that, from a European perspective, it seemed to be covering old ground and seemed to present some odd (from our point of view) concerns and to be unnecessarily focused on the teacher's personal appearance and location in the class room. Members of the group who had lived and taught in the US assured us that these would be very real concerns for professors in the US system in the early 90s which led us to make comparisons with our own experiences. What emerged from this was a discussion of the effects of neo-liberalism on the more radical outposts of British higher education (in particular, the 'modern' universities which had been the old polytechnics) and how this was currently structuring, not only teaching styles but also the expectations of students. We agreed that this made our reading of hooks timely in that she and Scapp seemed to be producing a critique of both the content and context of pedagogical practice which, despite oddities like the emphasis on what a teacher should be wearing, could be applied to understanding the marketisation of education and the sense in which radical theoretical interventions only make sense to students as mental exercises with no application beyond the classroom. This was somewhat disputed by one member of the group who had returned to working in social services after completing her degree and had found herself no longer able to comply with certain attitudes and practices. We then returned to a discussion of how hooks and Scapp's dialogue seemed to be presenting an argument for radicalising the teacher as subject (and, presumably, therefore, the 'student' as well) and we agreed that their strategies were somewhat conservative in that they were primarily concerned with changing practice within the university without very much questioning of how the concept of the university itself demands capitulation to a competitive ideology and that the academic 'star' system which they abhor is not something that can necessarily be fought within the confines of an architecture and environment which codifies student/teacher relationships in advance of any actual engagement. We did note that they referred to taking the teaching outside of the university but agreed that they didn't go far enough in questioning how this might provide for a more egalitarian environment while still retaining an emphasis on the radical possibilities of understanding the implications of critical theory. In other words, how can theory and radical action come together without theory being dismissed as 'elitist' because it is associated only with academic practice? Is it as simple as providing environments (like the London Freeschool) which can challenge the divide between traditional teaching and self education? We found that we were, once again, talking about formulating a clearer idea of how radical theory and anti-capitalism are connected and decided that the next reading group would focus on this subject. We found ourselves then discussing Gramsci's notion of 'common sense' and how this could be read both as a theorising of how ideology limits imaginative possibilities and the potential for 'common' forms of knowledge to be brought into political action. Several readings were then suggested including Jeremy Gilbert's Anti-Capitalism and Culture, Richard Day's Gramsci is Dead and a return to Gramsci himself (The Prison Notebooks). Specific readings will be notified by email. Happy Chunakah!