To lend and transform

Maxine Greene often writes of the aesthetic encounter as "lending a work your life." What does it mean to lend your life to a work of art, or for that matter, an experience?

It speaks of  a temporary status as a loan implies a repayment or a giving back at some point. It may speak to the loaner’s giving over and doing without during the period of the loan. Yet at the same time, ownership is never questioned, is never transferred.

Can the act of loaning change the object that was loaned out? In some cases, the loan results in an expansion or increase in the object as when interest is paid. Greene seems to apply a sense of transformation--really, creativity--through the act when she writes:

In some fashion, as one attends, one lends the work one's life. Or one brings it into the world through a sometimes mysterious interpretive act in a space between oneself and the stage or the wall or the text (2001, p. 128).

So perhaps in lending a work of art your life, you are creating through the interpretive act another entity that isn't solely owned or connected to you and yourself or to the artist. It is an added dimension to the work of art and I would think, the loaned life of the attender. It is earnings on the loan, but it's a yield that is specific to the loaner and the work of art.

Just trying to work this through...

Disappointment as validity

I have recently submitted a draft of my dissertation chapter devoted to "data collection and analysis." This is the chapter where my research question is answered--what does Maxine Greene mean when she uses lived life in her writing? And the answer was not what I had hoped for at the start of this process.

It had been my hunch--maybe even my desire--at the start of this journey that lived life in Maxine Greene's writing would designate the time and place in which the individual is fully conscious in the existential sense of coming to be as a result of reflective practice. I had thought and wanted lived life to be the already reflected life that poised the individual to consider alternative realities. But my analysis kept on questioning at what point consciousness/the consideration of alternative realities emerges within lived life. The analysis was showing me that consciousness was occurring after lived life had been established. In the end, lived life was somewhat analogous to the pre-reflective state of Husserl's life-world and Merleau-Ponty's primordial silence. Somewhat analogous.

My interpretive work revealed to me that though lived life occupies the realm of the pre-reflective state, it is distinct from the other sensibilities that name the state life-world or primordial silence. In the end, for me, lived life in Greene's writing is fully connected to the idea of personhood and the essence of being as tied to action. The lived life is distinct to Greene's philosophy.

I stumbled though with trying to comprehend just what the pre-reflective state is in an existential consciousness. I eventually was able to conceptualize physically through a gesture/physical state that is linked to the moment prior to going on stage, to singing a song, to applying paint to a canvas. For me, it is the body lifted out of its gravitational pull into the hips (for women). In this place, the body can go anywhere: forward, backward, upward or downward. It's the moment before the choice of movement or direction has been decided or communicated to the brain.

It was interesting in talking about this process and discovery this week with a colleague at work. When I described to her my difficulty in comprehending the pre-reflective, she stated easily and eagerly "well, that's what most of life is and how we operate--in the pre-reflective." It was then that I realized that I have been living in a hyper-activated state for a few years now. The dissertation has me thinking and reflecting at every moment of repose (my morning showers are especially reflective). My new job has me analyzing and assessing the best course of action with everything I do. Even house chores have me thinking about the most time-efficient way of feeding the cat while thawing the turkey sausages and gathering the recycling for pick up the next morning.

I titled this post "Disappointment as validity." The idea of triangulation with hermeneutical work can be challenging. The researcher has to be cautious in regards to confirmation bias--not allowing the interpretation to play out as I would want it to. And so now that lived life isn't what I had thought and really, wanted it to be, I feel that I have brought a valid viewpoint to bear on my answer. And so my disappointment is my validity.