In his remarks opening the 6th international Dialogue Under Occupation conference, founder Larry Berlin posed the question:

“What is the purpose of dialogue?”

Closing scene, Fantasia Opus 3, the fantastic range of children's dreams.

It is a question that the people attending and presenting at the DUO VI conferences did not figure out. Perhaps part of the reason for the absence of an answer is in the framing of the question. We are mostly academics, which means we usually talk abstractly about things we study rather than doing them with each other.

There is less confusion (it seems) about the other key term in the title of our conference: occupation. I did not think of “occupation” as a synonym for “career” during Sophia Mihic’s keynote presentation on the near history of neoliberalism. Now, afterwards, this strikes me as odd, since her argument about the term “human capital” relies on the difference between “labor” and “work.” I suspect this is an instance of collective repression – a de-selection of one possible meaning in favor of another, and then forgetting having made thechoice. Sophia’s thoughtful presentation and critical engagement throughout the conference helps me wonder: are DUO conference participants in the process of producing a work of critical art? Or are these conferences solely labor – the repetition of rituals that must be performed in order to satisfy and maintain professional credentials? Could we somehow manage to do both?

Pre-Occupied: Narratives (told & untold) that fill us up

A floor runner by Ferdinand Kriwet on display at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC

In a similarly linguistic vein, Cris Toffolo asked us to consider the difference between “post-occupation” and “post-conflict” as labels describing countries like Lebanon. The main distinction between the two terms involve the presence and extent of violence as well as its duration. DUO VI conference participants were undecided whether the use of these labels matter. Instead, we talked about the actions taken “post” – specifically whether the politicians, media, and populace (all of its diverse publics) engage an open communication process designed to promote healing, or choose some other coping strategy as the means to simply and quickly move on. I was particularly struck by the critique she found of Lebanon’s political leadership (Assi Collective Memory – Lebanon, by Elsa Abou Assi) which describes the decision to absolve insiders by blaming outsiders. There had already been a couple of strong statements issued during some of the Question-and-Answer periods about (for instance), there being no one to forgive but oneself for allowing the outsiders to come in and wreck havoc. There is so much to unpack in Lebanese discourse about war and conflict, so many stories that have been told (adult-to-adult) and passed from adults (especially parents) to children who are now grown up and coping in their varied ways with the underlying, unresolved tensions: of necessity finding courage in the face of fear.

Engaging youth’s multicultural reality

View from the castle at Byblos/Jbeit, Lebanon.

The DUO VI conference attracted few of the young people at Lebanon American University, let alone activists from the broader Beirut community. Most youth were more likely to partake in cultural performance events, such as a screening of Rabat. I was lucky to meet Director Jim Taihuttu; we talked about audience reactions to the film. The cast and crew put serious effort into capturing the way youth in Holland actually talk, codeswitching among languages (e.g., Dutch, Moroccan, Surinamese) and borrowing terms back and forth in an unpredictable, dynamic flux. The dialogue is so representative and “natural” that audience members of their peer group feel as if they’re “in the car” with the protagonists. In a generous gesture of inclusion, Rabat is captioned in Dutch as well as English and Arabic so that older generations and foreigners can understand the linguistic mixing. “I disagree with people who talk about multiculturalism as something that you are either for or against, “Jim said. “It is what we are living, a multicultural reality.”

The Key

Barbara Birch’s DUO conference presentation included some guidelines that apply to teaching in general. Countering the linguistic imperialism of English, Barbara proposes the use of the English language as a source of social action that can enable transitions from current injustice to preferable futures. The critical question for teachers involves identifying the moment when you can move students from a wide focus (learning how to say things in general situations) to a narrow one: how to say things in very specific situations. This move, from the general topic to the specific sociocultural transaction, allows the exploration of different norms in the immediate moment of communication. Turning that key opens a door to learning how to navigate the emotions and colliding (complementing and contradicting) narratives involving questions of history and justice. As skills increase, students and teachers learning together can take on increasingly tricky challenges, creating new rituals of being with “Others” and living a new world into being.

Green and Red Lines: Asking Different Questions

Ending violence: domestic, national, religious

I do not know how the color symbolism came about, but I noticed the label of a “Green Line” is the same for both Beirut and Israel/Palestine. In terms of traffic lights, green means “go” – maybe this is a weird way to think of it, but it seems the very label has a subtext encouraging battle. The implication struck me when Ilham Nasser presented her findings on public acts of forgiveness in Arab culture. She discovered a “red line” beyond which people would not forgive others – it could be an insult, a misunderstanding, a failure to respect religious beliefs, etc. Again, it is the symbolism that seems significant: forgiveness is RED (don’t go there!) while war is GREEN (storm ahead, boys!)

The Light

Cris’ roundtable was about the limits and possibilities of talking about human rights as a way to leverage public healing processes. In political science, there is a lot of evidence that broad political-journalistic efforts of reconciliation are functional and productive (South Africa, Ireland, and Guatemala were named as examples). The information Cris shared complemented Professor Makram Ouaiss’ opening keynote address, in which he emphasized asymmetry as the way to shift conflicts from on-going cycles of violence to non-violent methods for ending occupation and establishing civil societies. Dr Ouaiss’ point is that non-violence is understudied, proven effective, and morally legitimate.

Given the right structure and support, I hypothesize that there are enough young people in Beirut willing and capable of having this difficult conversation. Despite the horrors they’ve been through, I witnessed some amazing displays of conviction concerning the things that really matter: including peace with Palestinians and sharing joy within one’s family. As Dr Ouaiss explained, persuading people of the logic and effectiveness of non-violence takes time and repeated efforts.

Written half in Beirut, half in Amherst MA.
Link to the NYTimes Art Review:
Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language

Celebrating a student production of collective memories from their childhoods in Lebanon..

LD (the eldest) spoke for the group, “I don’t care, but I want a code name.” The youngest argued for Peter Pan. No problem.  I am a pushover as long as it works—otherwise you have to convince me (this is not impossible). Twenty-Two exclaimed, “It’s not like I’m hiding anything!” I had wanted to know the size of their ambitions. “Big questions over small glasses,” answered Small Fry, a tall guy protecting Polly Sigh. Sleepy brought Attached along for the ride. Spike agreed with OJ:

“Communication arts are the future, not politics!”

Yalla. Humans, mech maskal, will never be free of the polis. The question is whether politicians can ever again be heroes. No more the sole character forging a lonely way, from now on (in this heavily-mediated age) ‘twill be committed teams and affinity groups treading new paths together who transform the global inheritance of random torture to livable interrelations for the children and the children’s children.

Insist!
Swords no more – salvage words!
Who will rise and heal the future?

I depart Beirut as I entered, awash in serendipity. Back in whaling days, the Captain’s cabin was a private refuge. Entry by others was privileged and rare.

Yearning toward the future . . .

Generous gifts of time and talk throughout my stay dance questions among the neurons of my mind. Smoke of mixed feelings percolates in memory, stimulated by shining souls seeking solace in playful remembrance while drowning sorrow in drink and mad beats relentless rhythms demanding more faster sooner more already more tomorrow who can care much about tomorrow something happened in the north yesterday I’m glad you did not travel south today.

Old as I am my heart beats clear. Vibrant youth, what will ye choose—the stories you’ve been told or the ones you wish to author? My return, Inshallah, issues forth with your desire.

Written in flight, Beirut-Rome-New York City;
Edited and posted from Queens

redirecting phenomenological reduction

Details, Description, Context, Bleh

It is impossible to say what happened in the roundtable on Future Change at the Dialogue under Occupation conference hosted at Lebanon-American University in Beirut. We have video, which will allow description and documentation. But so what? The important matter is what our time together comes to mean, and that depends. Determining what the meaningfulness of our gathering might become was not possible even before that Romanian dude added stuff to the white board. During the session, Sophia challenged the authority of the interpreter; Raz claimed arguments have limits; Ibrahim asked about the irony of Occupy Wall Street; Barbara was misinterpreted; Woyciech offered hope; and Stephanie [from Brazil] talked about brackets. Anne was quiet. Larry did not want me to forget presuppositions. Niam (operating the camcorder) conversed with herself

Fishing for a Future (Warning: Academic Jargon Ahead)

talking about time

The topic was (sortof) about time – as in, how to find one’s placement in a diverse group based upon language use and dynamics of interaction so as to (attempt) to aim in the direction of a desirable future with meta-awareness of entailments (or entrailments, if you prefer the post-workshop revision). I am always wondering if it can be done, what it would look like if we tried, and how control &/or the desire for control is involved. Specifically, I asked this group if we could de-link discourses of occupation from physical places in space to temporal enactments in time by transforming our own discourse? Would it be desirable to do so? I am not sure anyone was convinced! It is hard to draw coherence from loose collections of phrases, concepts, and fragments of comments snatched from sound and written down. “Peace is hard.” “History is big.”  [(Name ye well the limits of argument!) Stop thee not the pursuit of amity!]

The Circle: A symbol of wholeness

The group was game to engage the quest, at least for the duration of the session. A pluck lot, these academics, simultaneously kind and critical. Serious and generous. Diverse yet dialogic: no problematic moments (of the theoretical kind) – although desire to rename – enunciative (cf Hannah Arendt), aha, a collective break in phenomenological flow when we all notice – for an instant – what we’re doing. I barely mentioned simultaneity as counterpart and tied few knots with identity. Nonetheless I quoted Ilham (with her permission!), however that conversation slides into remission, suspended, distended, perhaps beyond local use but could it grow wings to give flight elsewhere?

Creating our own origami unicorn

Playing with jargon: indexicality can be defined but entailments may be inexplicable

At the end of the second day of workshop sessions, a bunch of us began impromptu planning for growing the conference. If dialogue is to make a difference in the world, it must be sustained. As academics, we know the theory! But can we do it? Participants in the six conferences held to date have not yet managed to move beyond the typical monologic structure: schedule, attend, present, participate in a few interesting conversations, go home. Perhaps maintain a new collegial relationship or two. Maybe this year will be different?

I linked (above) to an essay describing the history of “Common Read” programs. It may seem like a non sequitor, but the simultaneity is that I just finished reading Ready Player One, the book selected for the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s First Year Experience Program. The (2011) book by Ernest Cline projects a future in which people escape and avoid dealing with reality by playing in a global virtual simulation, a web-based interactive game called OASIS. The immersive environment of OASIS is imaginable because it extrapolates from today’s use of social media. DUO Dialoguer, are you thinking WTF? Or is a little bell going off? Connect the dots! Traverse mediums, here’s a clue – this conversation moves!

Beirut, Lebanon

Center of the Storm (my interpretation for this painting) by Rajaa Hoteit

Palestine Monologues was received with enthusiasm by an audience of 200 people, most of whom stood throughout the performance in an outdoor grove at Lebanese-American University in Beirut. The play’s title aptly signals “monologues,” as the lead characters (Israeli soldiers, a Palestinian woman and man) issue forth their own views on the situation with barely any interaction. The stark separation of their respective monologues is mirrored in the bilingual performance: English (standing in for Hebrew) spoken by the Israeli characters and Arabic by the Palestinian characters.

Setting for the play, Palestine Monologues, at Lebanese-American University.

I was surprised at how non-ideologic the play by Sonja Linden turns out to be. There are many of the usual tropes – the repetitions of historical fact that do nothing to alter the current (future) terrain of possibility – but also an earnest plea for change, for youth to “get involved” and “be concerned” because this affects your/our future. By non-ideologic, I mean that the playwright and the performers gesture toward representing the humanity of both sides. There are still some lapses – perhaps purposeful, definitely politically rhetorical – that are disingenuous, such as the assertion, “This is not a security wall; this is a political wall.”  Actually, it is both: somehow this reality must be recognized if any movement is going to occur. (Although, the Iranian-American comedian Maz Jobrani put the culture in perspective for me by saying it all comes down to the love of negotiation. During his fundraiser for SANAD on Sunday night, he said the Palestinians and Israelis might get down to signing a complete settlement and then they would begin to argue over who would get to keep the pen.)

Context: We should probably call the conference, “Dialogue under Preoccupation”

This one needs no explanation, right? by Rajaa Hoteit

The muzzein’s periodic song grounds the audio landscape in Beirut.  One can hear it both outside and over the news from Al-Jazeera playing on the tv in the hotel room. I’ve been exploring the city while musing on how to organize my “roundtable” at the Dialogue Under Occupation conference which opens tomorrow night on the campus of Lebanese-American University.

The highlights have been meeting Rajaa Hoteit and Ferdaous Naili. Rajaa’s paintings were on exhibition at the Ministry of Tourism, which we passed only by chance. “Welcome to Lebanon. Welcome to my exhibit,”  she said after we talked about several of her paintings. I was hooked at first glance: anyone who can illustrate so deeply the turn to nature for inspiration after horrific devastation wins my heart. Ferdaous got me a seat at the student performance of Palestine Monologues, providing background info on the LAU Communication Arts program – especially the theatre emphasis on producing one’s own play. What gelled in my mind, after watching the play and (earlier today) the video of my workshop session at Dialogue under Occupation (DUO) IV, is how difficult it is to gain – and especially to then hold onto – insight about our own positioning and placement in historical time.

How soon we forget: Repression 101

Blooms in the midst of devastation, by Rajaa Hoteit

Thing is, I’ve met equally bright lights who are Jewish, including Israelis. It could be that there are Israelis who feel their nationality before their religion, as another non-constructive trope in the play would have it: “…before anything else, I am an Israeli!”  If Israeli pride had been framed in the same spirit with which Maz Jobrani teased the Lebanese about their version of group pride (”We’re not Arabs!  We’re Lebanese!), that would have meant something else – something that recognizes the essential human desire to belong, to be connected with “a people” rather than afloat as a solo, autonomous “individual” with no ties that bind in any direction whatsoever. Palestine Monologues opens with a couple of Israeli soldiers recounting the rapid descent into hell that accompanies conscription at age 18. First there’s fear, then dehumanization, then boredom – which (according to the first person testimony used as script for the play) is when the game begins. The rifle becomes “not a weapon, [but] a way to pass the time.” That other human being? After awhile, “you don’t even notice he’s there.” This is the modern description of how repression occurs: first you forget, then you forget that you forgot. I find myself remembering what I have forgotten over and over again: realization slipping back into the fog until an external spark draws that knowledge back to conscious mind.

Checkpoints and the possibility of Intervention

Students line up, eager to see Palestine Monologues at LAU.

Language, as amazing and wonderfully expressive as it is, can also be a trap. That’s the power of discourses, to capture our energy and attention and suck us into repeating only the already established ways of saying things. What was most compelling about the response of the youth to the impassioned finale of Palestine Monologues is how fervently they indicate a desire for change, and yet how far away we (all of us) are from articulating that change: from finding novel ways of talking that break old patterns and therefore create new ways of relating in social and political reality.  As a discourse analyst interested in breaking established power relations and re-formulating new modes of interacting based in an a structure that (at least roughly) enables equalized life chances, I find that it is much easier to find evidence of failure to change the patterns than it is to find evidence of effective transformations – however, the transformations are possible!

In a chapter written for a media text, Examining Education, Media, and Dialogue under Occupation: The Case of Palestine and Israel, my co-authors and I pose a definition of dialogue that attempts to wrest the concept and practice of dialogue back from its watering-down to some amalgamation of ‘conversation’ and ‘debate.’  Dialogue is more than trading tropes of understanding or barbs of accusation in endless monologues. Dialogue is an engagement with others in which all of the participants (me, you) are open to being changed by each other. The changes could be in understanding of self or other, of history, of the meaning(s) of things: ultimately, to allow myself to be changed by you means I open myself to be rocked from the certainty of inherited preoccupations.

This is the terrain of courage. Some stories are worth holding onto; other stories damage the possibility of a livable future for us all.  We must to learn to tell the difference.

Beirut, Lebanon

Only life to live.

Most of my consciousness is directed toward my friend, a teacher, a guide who never led me wrong. Feeling grateful, mostly, for her life and all the gifts she gave, is giving, will continue to give.

Weird synchronies.  Today was the last lecture in a course I interpreted this semester on American Romanticism.  (Oh, are they talking about me?)  Earlier this semester I got excited by Walt Whitman.  I don’t think I ever read Leaves of Grass.  Now it’s Moby Dick.  I did try to read it, once.  On my own – not for a class.  I don’t remember anything that I read because it was assigned.  (Careful, tangent alert!)

The teacher emphasized the relationship between Ahab and Starbuck – a lot of action happened between “The Quarterdeck” and “Symphony,” and there’s two key chapters in between: “The Musket” and “Cabin.”  Then we got to “The Chase.”  There’s also an intense analysis of Ishmael, the trope of embodiment, and the author’s philosophy. (Today the Occupy Wall Street movement is unleashing a wave of protest intended to ignite the 99%. I only know one person in the 1% who likes me.  I might have met some others but they didn’t like me too much.)

Mei Mei wants attention too.

1. Risk and Value
2. Moulage
3. A Resilience Regime

Risk and Value

One of the major shifts occurring in our lifetime is the increasing risk of being a victim of a disaster. Adapting to these new, changing conditions presents a classic challenge because day-to-day survival is generally taken for granted. The conveniences of technology and superb engineering infrastructure have cushioned much of the population from considering the constant threat of death that historically characterized human existence. Survival used to depend upon individual fortitude and extreme cooperation within communities – everyone knew this and acted accordingly.

Emergency Response Training for Community Volunteers in the District of Colombia

It may become true again that survival will depend upon individual preparedness and the tightness of your immediate community in planning together how to respond to a disaster. Trained professionals are stretched to encompass a vast range of knowledge, skill, and experience in their discipline (fire, policing, medical, etc.) and beyond. Now, First Responders must also

• be skilled in communicating with diverse communities (there is no one-size-fits-all language),
• understand the precisely relevant needs of unique individuals (rather than assuming everyone is exactly the same as everyone else), and
• comprehend and use new technologies of social media.

Although amazing improvements have been made throughout the field of emergency management since 9-11 and Hurricane Katrina, recent natural disasters around the country continue to expose weaknesses and gaps. Invariably, many these gaps revolve around expectations that volunteers will miraculously appear and take care of all the ragged edges.

Interoperations: Self-enclosed or Interactive?

Of course there are, and always will be, spontaneous volunteers during acute stages of a disaster. Some good samaritans will also gut out the long haul. But vital services for vulnerable populations such as the elderly and medically ill, transportation for people with mobility disabilities, language support services for people fluent in languages other than English, childcare, pet and service animals husbandry, and a host of other specific functional and access needs are not going to materialize out of nowhere. Adequate emergency response now and in the future is going to be measured on the basis of casualties among people in these groups. Just as recent disasters have illustrated that professional First Responders are not yet capable of anticipating and responding properly to every individual situation, the inadequacy of relying on volunteers to respond effectively and efficiently in caring for the most vulnerable populations is also blatantly obvious.

The entire system needs to evolve.

Moulage

Serve DC exercises Community Emergency Response Team Members

The District of Colombia’s Mayor’s Office of Volunteerism, Serve DC, is taking steps to build relationships between trained volunteers and professional emergency responders. On Saturday, April 14th, more than two dozen previously-trained Community Emergency Response Team members were given a taste of what it would be like to deploy as ‘first responders’ to a scene involving multiple victims. This first-time event for the District put volunteers in the field to be coached by fire personnel and emergency response consultants. On a beautifully sunny day, a well thought-out “high wind event” disaster scenario challenged these would-be rescuers to work in teams, coordinate with each other both within and between teams, and demonstrate their ability to stablize wounded people while awaiting more highly trained medical personnel.

Inter-role Communication

It was my first experience with moulage, the realistic display of severe injuries. I spent most of the time observing the Incident Commander and considering the communication dynamics. There are some tough inter-role dynamics to sort out. By role, I mean the different categories of function that need to be performed by designated individuals. Roles are distinguished by tangible criteria such as amount of training and experience, and are performed according to less tangible personal qualities of the individual. For this CERT exercise, the primary roles were professional First Responders (acting as coaches) and volunteers – including the victims (talk about a role that requires patience!). While the actual exercise was focused on intra-role communication (among and between CERT volunteers), the practical test of CERTs is going to be how and when they are integrated by the professionals into the response effort.

This will require some adaptation on both sides: volunteers need to learn to confirm to hierarchies of command that are fairly rigid, and professionals need to accept more variation in the communication of significant information.

A Resilience Regime

Jason Williamson evaluates the success of the first Serve DC CERT Exercise

One of the most telling indicators of the quality of human social organization are the lines drawn around paid and unpaid labor during emergencies. I have already begun to argue the necessity for a new, temporary designation for professionals and paraprofessionals who respond during a disaster. Minimum levels of training would need to be established, along with Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for alert and notification, issuing safety equipment, deployment, administration for billing and reimbursement, and access to post-disaster services such as trauma counseling and medical care.

1. Perils in the Foreground
2. Promises in the Background
3. Possibilities of Dialogue: Repressed or Just Damn Hard?

Perils in the Foreground

We are grateful for Eugene’s engagement with our first “report” on a possible problematic moment at the mini-Bakhtinian conference on education. At a later point we hope to respond to his What Do You Think (WDYT) query, for now we are framing our second report in response to his assertion that we are privileging form over content. (Our claim is to draw attention to process — what we sometimes call “the social” — which could be understood as a succession of forms, and is typically under-emphasized in academic contexts.) In fact, James’ comment to the first report anticipates Eugene’s criticism!  James wrote:

We missed out on presenting our content.

From our vantage point, then, Eugene and we are ‘on the same page’ or ‘looking in the same direction’ or otherwise ‘united’ in gazing upon an object/subject of relevance.

James and Steph pinpointed our self-critique on James’ admission, during the fishbowl, that “my mind is a complete blank.” That was a facilitation issue – Steph was juggling a dual recognition: that the small group work intended to preceed and thereby inform the fishbowl task had been subverted by several conference participants, and that James – who was supposed to lead the fishbowl – had been silenced. In retrospect, the facilitation move Steph prefers she had made (and hopes she recalls if such an event arises again) would have been to hold the space for James to articulate his experience. Instead, she moved on, contributing to the miniaturization of James’ complex identities and intelligences.

The silencing of James (a co-facilitator and the originator of the Problematic Theory) is the most blatant example we have yet experienced of simultaneity at work. We find ourselves still somewhat floundering – especially in the ’silence’ (non-response) of other individuals who were in the room during the fishbowl activity which was designed as the centerpiece of our workshop, Bringing Simultaneity to Dialogic Pedagogy.

Promises in the Background

We are delighted that (from our perspective!) we accomplished everything we hoped to and learned more than we could have imagined.

Denigrated identities.

Did we recreate the dynamics of the PM-the group stuck.
Liesl photo. Do we know any symbolic interactionists who could help us do a spiel on her possible significance? Any juice in the youngest/eldest daughter issue? Nazi context for Sound of Music. Time Nazi comment by Eugene.

Possibilities of Dialogue: Repressed or Just Damn Hard?

responsive workshop design and the necessity of participation from others in handling the emergent dynamics

No overt norms but many covert norms some of which became manifest.
Problem of trying to get academics to reflect and apply their theories in practice. Application or implication?

Hierarchy of chronotypes. Most locked in individual chronotype.
Bring in differand work.
Follow up work to conference we are doing.

Through me the afflatus surging and surging . . . . through me the current and index.

Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you,
You my rich blood, your milky stream pale strippings of my life;
Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you,
My brain it shall be your occult convolutions,
Root of washed sweet-flag, timorous pond-snipe, nest of guarded duplicate eggs, it shall be you,
Mixed tussled hay of head and beard and brawn it shall be you,
Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you;
Sun so generous it shall be you,
Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you,
You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you,
Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you,
Broad muscular fields, branches of liveoak, loving lounger in my winding paths, it shall be you,
Hand I have taken, face I have kissed, mortal I have ever touched, it shall be you.

I hear the trained soprano . . . . she convulses me like the climax of my love-grip;
The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies,
It wrenches unnamable ardors from my breast,
It throbs me to gulps of the farthest down horror,
It sails me . . . . I dab with bare feet . . . . they are licked by indolent waves,
I am exposed . . . . cut by bitter and poisoned hail,
Steeped amid honeyed morphine . . . . my windpipe squeezed in the fakes of death,
Let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles,
And that we call Being.

Performing "I Sing the Body Electric" in the 1980 film, Fame.

Leaves of Grass

Dolphin  Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc
Garden City, New York
“…a reprint of the first edition, published in Brooklyn, New York, in 1855. The text is a faithful copy of the original, and has not been edited or abridged in any way. The typography and design…have been altered, however, to meet the requirements of [now, post-]modern production methods.”
Quotations (in sequence) from pages 55, 56, 59, and liner notes before the title page.

Promises and Perils of Dialogic Pedagogy

It certainly wasn’t boring.

At least not after the slow start! But maybe the start wasn’t actually that slow . . . here I am re-thinking the beginning after the end.

We did not rush back from lunch, so the first set of presentations did not begin on time. Actually, time boundary-keeping was broken earlier, when Eugene and Ana asked James and me to say something during the opening/welcome talk about our action research project. We wanted to keep it brief. I did not think to record the time we actually took nor how long beyond the time allotted in the schedule, but it seems likely that we were already over time before we had practically begun.

Prelude

Lunch was leisurely yet animated. I was twice called over to the other table in the aftermath of a so-called problematic moment, not to mention finding myself in wild debate with an Israeli over the title of a conference that I am attending in May. We were late getting back to the conference venue – how late past the scheduled start I have no idea. Did the first presenter go way over his designated time? I held up until the third or fourth presentation and then I could not remain alert. I don’t think I actually fell asleep, just dozed but still – enough to feel a little embarrassed.

Tweet activity was okay – we had active tweeters right away and some persisted throughout. You can watch a video of the Tidepool visualization of tweet activity from the first 36 hours of the conference here: #Bakhtin tweets in Tidepool.  Also, you might be interested to know that, at the very end of the conference, @nafoolah tweets from far outside-the-room: “does this hashtag come from nothing to help in my studying about Mikhail Bakhtin” and @antoesp shares Cresswell and Hawn (2012), with dual hashtags for #bakhtin and #epistemology.

Transformation

Two tweets on the same topic, posted simultaneously.

Thankfully the energy shifted during the last presentation of Day 1 when Ana presented her struggle to maintain balance within the tension of being drawn, simultaneously, to two opposed chronotopes: sticking with the standard curriculum or shifting to the Live Event. Her presentation generated the first simultaneous tweets, as well as the first animated Question and Answer period of the conference. Then we were off to dinner. Did anyone sense conflict percolating around the edges, in the hallways, offline? I was unaware.

The First Tsunami was covert

Neither my colleague, who discovered a theory of problematic moments, nor myself recognized the possible problematic moment when it occurred during the second day’s first session. I rejected the idea when it was first presented to me, but once past my initial gut reaction I had to admit that I had felt an emptiness open up, a silence deep enough that wonder regarding what would happen next began to grow. Perhaps I sensed others’ emotions begin to fill the void….but the facilitator re-covered the breach for us; we all went along with her move. I forgot about it. At break however, a participant and one of the organizers approached me with the claim that they had caused a problematic moment.

Pinpointing a possible problematic moment

I rejected this instantly because James and I are pretty sure group-level problematic moments cannot be caused by individual action. This theoretically-descriptive aspect, combined with my previous experiences with problematic moments, led to my out-of-hand rejection. But Kathy was persistent, and her language described my embodied perception perfectly, a silence after a silence. Nearly 24 hours later, when we were able to ask conference participants about their experience of/in that moment, many of the participants who had been present were not able to distinguish the second silence from the first: either they sensed one stable pause; noticed no pause; noticed but deemed it unremarkable, perhaps cultural but nothing more); or was already experiencing an encompassing state-of-being which consumed the distinctiveness all particular moments during that timespan. Such nuances of intrapersonal response detail incredible subtleties of simultaneity and are a significant finding of this action research project.

Control: Fight or Flight?

Based on everything we learned afterward (and, may I just say, we learned a helluva lot!), I can imagine that the instigators of the planned disruption might not have felt the shift from the first to the second silence because they were enjoying the carnivalesque pleasure of rebellion. As it happened, the presenter quickly picked a possible response and pursued it. And, as noted above, none of the rest of us intervened in the tension between pursuing/resuming a standard chronotope or shifting to the chronotope of engaging with Here-and-Now live events. During an interview, the presenter explained, with a touch of regret, that she had not acted as usual in that kind of situation because the group had not yet established a communal sensibility.

Normally we would have captured the PM on video and been able to show it back to the group for interrogation, but unexpected requests for copies of presentations had thrown us for a loop. We missed recording a few presentations while grappling to absorb the ramifications of distributing copies of video obtained under conditions of informed consent. Without the PM to replay, we were left with only the principals’ reports of their respective experiences of the moment. These proved insufficient inspiration for a collective exploration of whether or not a PM had occurred. Instead, we found ourselves in a swirl of debate trying to teach the relevance of differences between interpersonal (individual) and group-level dynamics. In retrospect, we realized that it would have been helpful to articulate the theoretical frameworks that guide our analytical gaze and generation of hypotheses.

Norming: Academic, not Innovative

Probably it could not have been any other way. Despite the encouragement we took from pre-conference email communication describing, for instance, how “Our mini-Bakhtinian conference is not the same as every other conference you have attended,” the rituals of social interaction were not significantly affected. The change in form, “that we don’t have parallel sessions, but the whole conference takes place in only one track” may not have implied as much willingness to explore the stages of group development as we optimistically interpreted. After the possible problematic moment, James and I became absorbed with preparing for our scheduled workshop slot: we were generating hypotheses about the possible problematic moment and imagining how to design the session in order to maximize engagement with the data. As far as I can recall, the presentations continued along the rest of Day 2. Presumedly most of the conference participants again enjoyed a meal together; we huddled in our hotel room, parsing video and strategizing how best to maximize the learning opportunity.

Performing?

For this first blog entry (the project proposal specified two or three), I’m working from memory and also trying to cast as wide and broad an overview as I can, while remaining tight on the emergent data that we selected for qualitative analysis. The foursome who appeared to give the first presentation on Day 3 had not been previously present; from my point-of-view they caught a huge thrust of energy as the group initiated a Q&A only a few minutes into their presentation. I was quite impressed with how they handled the feedback, apparently unruffled they took it all down and hung in there for the rest of the morning (but that’s all). It seemed that conference participants who had remained since the start were hitting stride. Then came our workshop and it proceeded as if grudgingly. Although no carnivalesque actions were performed, two of the small groups overtly chose not to conduct the structured “now what” task but instead opted to talk about something else that they wanted to talk about with each other. We left to debrief and, upon return some 90 minutes later, were informed that we had missed a(nother possible) problematic moment.

The Second (possible) Problematic Moment was Overt

A conference participant who had left remains in conversation via Twitter

We were not there and did not leave the camcorder running, so we have paltry data to work with. Eugene told me they have faced such disagreement before, that it has to do with (according to some) “application,” and (according to him), “implication” regarding his dialogic pedagogy philosophy (?) of teaching. Yifat said, “Oh you really missed something,” and James was told that there was a din, an outburst of many talking at the same time. It sure sounds like a group-level event. I mused about it on twitter, getting responses from Eugene and also Mara – who had been able to attend (along with several others) only the first two days of the conference.

Transition

"love" was tweeted at least 16 times in 30 minutes

We were only able to stay for the first presentation of the last, fourth day of the conference.  It would be cool if some quantitative analyst would run the tweet data (as captured in Tidepool tweet counts) and correlate word frequency with the topics of each workshop. As with the National Science Foundation tweet data (Idiographic Case #1) from their Workshop on Transformative Research, the tweets that Tidepool captures represent only a partial perspective on the conference-as-a-whole. For what it’s worth, the word with the highest count within the time boundary of a single presentation was brought to us by Jayne.

Most Tweeters share pithy thoughts that they think may be of interest, humor, insight. The best occasion to join Twitter is during a conference or event where other participants are also/already Tweeting. The trick is to find out what special identifier – called a hashtag (details below) – is being used as the code for collecting Tweets about the experience of that event. At academic and business conferences, these Tweets usually consist of a) quotes or paraphrases of what presenters are saying and b) commentary about the quotes, people and/or conditions of the venue. Tweeters who are so inclined may engage in networking or repartee – both with other people in attendance (i.e., who are “in the room”), and also with people who are not physically present but following the Tweets about the event from “outside the room.” Sometimes different perspectives are evident; often all one gets is a collage of statements. In order to make sense of these strange smatterings, one has to extrapolate relationships of the various Tweets with the theme of the event, and imagine what positions and dynamics they might represent.

Table of Contents:

1. Why Tweet?
2. Action Research Proposal
3. Potentially Transformative Research
4. The Basics

Why Tweet?

Even if you rarely contribute your own original Tweets, simply reading what people are talking about, and Re-Tweeting (command: RT) are significant contributions to a crucial conversation. The conversation is messy, but software tools are being invented to help sort through all the different discourses by collecting intersections, simultaneities, juxtapositions, rhythm and rhyme. Tidepool, for instance, is an open source tool still in the early stages of development. Tidepool’s first public use was at the 2012 #ictinferno, a Summit on Information and Communication Technology hosted by the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “Digital revolution is a game changer. #ictinferno,” tweeted @jonberndtolsen, summarizing a point by keynote presenter Douglass Trumbull.

The success of Tidepool at the #ictinferno emboldened a surprise action research engagement with the 2012 Workshop on Transformative Research hosted by the National Science Foundation. The Tidepool visualization and Tweet Archive provided just enough substance to generate an open, public conversation about what it means to do transformative research.

Action Research Proposal:

I’m curious whether something worth pursuing might come from linking the #nsftr conversation with this week’s #bakhtin conversation. James has noticed that I seem to be considering TR (transformative research) and dialogic pedagogy (DP) as two sides of the same coin. Are they? Would putting the expertise of language/dialogue specialists into conversation with the expertise of interdisciplinary scientists generate conditions for making headway on a wicked problem or two, by “incorporat[ing] knowledge from multiple perspectives from different scientific disciplines and from the public as a way of breaking free of traditional thinking patterns“?

Potentially Transformative Research

Is there such a thing as pre-identified “potentially transformative research”? Similar to climate change/public policy scholar @danadolan, I’m eager to see the #NSFTR Workshop Report! In just a dozen comments to my critical discourse analysis of the #NSFTR Tweets, several challenging dynamics of group interaction have arisen. There’s the problem of terminology (Bubbles? “Don’t call them portals!” Ah, they are clouds.) There’s also the problem of theory. The description of Lyotard’s “phrase” and “genre” sure reminds me of Bakhtin, and Lyotard’s differend must be related to Derrida’s différance.  Meanwhile, one may want to be alert for diatribes: are they tangents steering engagement away from a certain kind of social/interactional dynamic, or representations of dynamics being enacted, somehow, by participants and witnesses to the conversation? (And when topics are flagged as such, what then? Not to mention spontaneous outbursts of songwriting!) You’ve also got to consider the practical applications: is there any product to be made with theoretical ideas or are they pie-in-the-sky? And what about deviations from the original objectives? How constraining is the allowance for development?

The Basics:

For the Mini-Bakhtin Conference on Education: Promises and Challenges of Dialogic Pedagogy, we are hoping to inspire some new and experienced Tweeters to Tweet using the special identifier (known as a hashtag) #Bakhtin – case, btw, does not matter, but the # symbol does! The # symbol in front of a word or acronym constitutes a hashtag. If you do not have a Twitter account, please consider signing up and Tweeting during the conference, even if you never use it again!

Some tips:

• Most professional people use their full/real names, or a recognizable variation. I played around with mine (@stephjoke) to poke a bit of fun at myself. James played it straight up, @jamescumming.
• You can “follow” us (search for our usernames in the search box on the Twitter homepage, make sure you keep the @ symbol! That turns the nickname into an address). All Tweets by whoever you follow will appear in your Twitter account, including Tweets without the hashtag #bakhtin.
• Even if you decide not to sign up for a Twitter account, you can google the hashtag, #BAKHTIN, and see what (if anything) is being Tweeted.
• (I came across a few Tweets last week including #Bakhtin hashtag by Tweeters who were quoting or otherwise referencing our hero). These outsiders probably don’t care about this conference, but you never know!
• At the conference, Steph will be available to provide Twitter assistance and support.
• We will be collecting Tweets in two ways: an archive at  http://darkallyredesign.com/tweets/ and with the “visualizer” called Tidepool. The Tidepool visualization of Tweets will be displayed during the conference: http://darkallyredesign.com/tidepool/bakhtin/

For additional information, please see Understanding Twitter: Why Twitter is Less Like Facebook and More Like Email – Learn about what Twitter is, how it works, and how to use it to interact with others. Are you trying to fit Twitter into a Facebook mold? If so, you might be missing out!