The sediment of embodiment

In using this blog I have come to realize that there are stirrings and strains within my thinking that keep on re-emerging time and time again. When I review past postings, I see my hunches and notions playing out at different periods during this process, often without memory of their previous existence. For instance, claiming the use of my first-person voice as a creative act. When I wrote about that notion within my methodology chapter, I hadn't realized I had considered it months earlier in Living [Maxine] Greene.

This past week I discovered that my interest in embodiment as a function of learning, as a function of coming to know, as a function of consciousness, has been stirring within for some time. During the week I was teaching a one-week intensive in arts education for masters-level students. One of our sessions included a visit from a teaching artist who presented work she had done in a residency at a school of one of my former students.

The impetus for the residency arose out of my student's frustration as a math interventionist. The interventions she was assigned to use consisted of worksheets: paper and pencil.  But the students she was assisting did not excel in paper and pencil approaches. We tossed around ideas about arts integration strategies that she might attempt in the seated-at-desks setting that she and her students occupied. But what became apparent was the kinesthetic tendencies these students had towards their learning. "Get thee to a movement specialist," I advised her, "and let the embodiment of math begin!"

The residency came together and the movement specialist took my recent class through some of the work she did with the students. But the discussions and ruminations I had with the math interventionist occurred long before my literature review where embodiment presented itself to me as a foundation for coming to know the lived life. Clearly, embodiment was been part of the "sediment" I bring to my inquiry. This sediment is not fixed according to Greene:

And we need, as Maurice Merleau-Ponty has put it, to form the events we uncover in the past into an "intelligible series," the events that sediment meanings in us, "not just as survivals or residues, but as the invitation to a series, the necessity of a future" (LL, 1978, p. 119).

Sediment indicates a layering and accumulation of meaning which allows for change over time. The fossils infused in the first strata, while foundational in character, don't prescribe a sameness within the subsequent accumulating layers.

In writing this post I am also connecting back to my own training as an artist which, at one point, was rigorously physical in its approach. My work with Anne Bogart, Kevin Kuhlke, Nina Martin, Wendall Beavers, Mary Overlie, Paul Langland, Torben Bjelke, Maria Consagra and others focused on the idea of physical improvisation to find and sustain character development. Though I did note this in my dissertation, somewhere, I tend to forget this most obvious element in my focus on embodiment. It's what a former roommate would call a "no duh" moment (he's now a full professor of philosophy in the Midwest so I embrace his neologisms with hope).

And so this sediment of embodiment is present within me. It is foundational in how I have come to engage in the arts and in the world. It aligns with the sense of accumulation, where meaning and interpretation can change over time. It is most certainly Merleau-Ponty's "invitation to a series, the necessity of a future" (Themes from the Lectures at the College de France 1952-1960, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970, pp. 40-41). It is also the basis of the aesthetic experience of learning. These connections give me pause, compel me to reflect, find me forgetting to breathe and often on the edge of my seat.

Knocking on the text

I have been trying to get my head around the methodology I will be using in my dissertation. I have been reading and researching for months now. I've been through books and too many articles on arts-based educational research; I had a foray into ethnography; I spent a lot of time contemplating reflexive methodologies (how reflexive of me!); and now, hermeneutics. At some point, this research has got to conclude. It must come to an end.

I think I know where I'm headed. I believe that what I'm doing with Greene's texts is, at the first level, a curatorial process that Graeme Sullivan mentions in Art Practice as Research (2010). Like a curator, I'm attempting a new perspective on her works of art/texts. The curatorial practice should start from a place of resonance and wonder (Stephen Greenblatt in Exhibiting Cultures, 1991) for the curator/dissertation writer in regarding these works that hopefully inspires the same in the viewer/reader. Within the hermeneutic tradition promoted by Alvesson and Skoldberg in Reflexive Methodology (2000), this resonance and wonder represents what they call "primary interpretation" (p. 261). This is a recognition that "interpretation precedes data in all research" (p. 261). My choice of pursuing the idea of the "lived life" in Greene's writings is my primary interpretation. The "lived life" presents a sense of resonance for me and wonder that triggers my inquiry.

Alvesson and Skoldberg recommend a thorough practice of reflexive methodology where the inquiry undergoes four levels of interpretation. This is to ensure validity of the research product  and, I think, validity of the practice within the research field. There is not enough time for me to enter into these four levels: interaction with empirical material; interpretation; critical interpretation; and reflection on text production and language use. I think I will only get as far interpretation, or second-level reflexivity. The secondary interpretation I have been envisioning is a discursive inquiry into the text that resembles a "horizontal fusion between researcher and text" (Alvesson and Skoldberg, 2000, p. 264). This fusion is how the authors view the existential hermeneutics of Heidegger and Gadamer.

Yet what precedes all of this is a discussion of the postmodern, poststructural viewpoint of the relationship between subject and object. It's an understanding that reality is always subjective and by extension, there is no such thing as pure objectivity. This is why I view it to be disingenuous to limit the narrative voice in research to a distant third-person viewpoint. The researcher is always present.

Another facet of this reflexive practice is the use of writing as inquiry. Writing as a way of coming to know and a way of becoming, as in this blog. This is what Laurel Richardson (2005) refers to as "creative analytical processes" or CAP.

In the end, my dissertation is only a slight digging below the hermeneutical surface of the "lived life" in Greene's texts. To achieve the exhaustive four levels of interpretation of Alvesson and Skoldberg is to enter the domain of post-doctoral work. Nevertheless, I am excited about this fusion of practices. What has become very apparent to me in this arduous journey is how the "lived life" is playing through the methodology. These reflexive methods all take the situatedness of the researcher into consideration through honoring the researcher's lived life in its impact on the research.

Hello and welcome

I am starting this blog, "Living [Maxine] Greene,"  as part of my dissertation writing process. As made evident form the title, my dissertation focuses on Maxine Greene, the "philosopher queen" of Teachers College. It is my intention to define what Maxine means by the term the "lived life" in her writing and speaking. It's a term that has stuck itself into the far corners of my consciousness since I first studied with her in 1994.

I am using a pseudo arts-based educational research practice for my dissertation work. It is interpretive in nature and a means towards establishing my interpretations validity is through a process of self-reflection. And self-reflection is very appropriate in all things Maxine. The arts piece will be reflected in the use of my narrative "I" in my dissertation writing (also appropriate to Greene) which is not typical of the academy. It is also likely that some of these blog posts will not only inform my interpretation but they may even appear in the final product.

Big props must be extended to Cynthia Vascak of PSU for her coining of "Living Greene." Thanks, Cynthia.

And so here we go, here I go. Thank you, Maxine.