In the introduction of Pedagogies of Crossing, Alexander writes:
I think that this text serves as an important backdrop for any research design, because the oppositional consciousness she is calling for an active being within knowledge production. That is, epistemology (ways of knowing) must transcend into ontology (ways of be/coming). This pedagogy demands that we seek a crossing (never fully crossed, always in a diasporic, instable process) as opposed to a static, fixed bridge between binaries. I appreciate Alexander's thoughts of the in-between spaces of the psychic and material, the Sacred and secular, the geographic and memory. In many ways, this relates to my research because any understanding of Kashmir and land cannot be only understood through objective cartographies or linear timelines of communal conflict. Because materiality is constructed through social relations, any research around land evokes the psychic: memory, storytelling, language, loss, crossings. For my research to do justice to its subject, at a level of thought and production, it's important for me to continually remind myself of these crossings.
The phrase, "making the world intelligible" to ourselves stood out to me the most in my re-read of this passage. With the modern academy, knowledge production serves as a tool to "make sense" of chaos, of external realities. What is Alexander asking of her readership here? Why?
“We cannot afford to be continuously, one-sidedly oppositional...Pedagogies is intended to intervene in multiple spaces where knowledge is produced. ...In the same way in which Paulo Freire narrated our ontological vocation to become more fully human, these pedagogies assemble a similar ontological imperative, which pertains to learning and teaching. And since there is no crossing that is ever undertaken once and for all, this ontological imperative of making the world intelligible to ourselves is, of necessity, an enterprise that is ongoing.
Since the central metaphor of this book rests in the tidal currents of the Middle Passage, we should want to know why and how this passage -- the Crossing -- emerged as a signifier...Put differently, pedagogies that are derived from the Crossing fit neither easily nor neatly into those domains that have been imprisoned within modernity’s secularized episteme. Thus, they disturb and reassemble the inherited divides of the Sacred and secular, the embodied and disembodied, for instance, pushing us to take seriously the dimensions of spiritual labor that make the sacred and disembodied palpably tangible, and, therefore, constitutive of the lived experience of millions of women and men in different parts of the word.”
I think that this text serves as an important backdrop for any research design, because the oppositional consciousness she is calling for an active being within knowledge production. That is, epistemology (ways of knowing) must transcend into ontology (ways of be/coming). This pedagogy demands that we seek a crossing (never fully crossed, always in a diasporic, instable process) as opposed to a static, fixed bridge between binaries. I appreciate Alexander's thoughts of the in-between spaces of the psychic and material, the Sacred and secular, the geographic and memory. In many ways, this relates to my research because any understanding of Kashmir and land cannot be only understood through objective cartographies or linear timelines of communal conflict. Because materiality is constructed through social relations, any research around land evokes the psychic: memory, storytelling, language, loss, crossings. For my research to do justice to its subject, at a level of thought and production, it's important for me to continually remind myself of these crossings.
The phrase, "making the world intelligible" to ourselves stood out to me the most in my re-read of this passage. With the modern academy, knowledge production serves as a tool to "make sense" of chaos, of external realities. What is Alexander asking of her readership here? Why?
Hi Hardeep, I am curious as to how you are understanding Alexander's articulation of the sacred (modernism's establishment of tradition and sacred subjectivity) and the secular alongside your work? I am interested because I see nation states and religion as operating similarly as ideological apparatus which both hold taboos, community narratives, and symbols. I think that when Alexander speaks about making the world intelligible to ourselves, Alexander is speaking about the ways we can make and change meaning out of these operating circumstances, just as Angela Davis speaks about the importance of defining social meanings at the bottom up and not the other way around. What do you think?
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