Harmonic Agency Theory
The theoretical framework that guides my work is harmonic agency.
Harmonic agency is a synthesis of several variations of the critical theme.
When approaching the complexity of the phyrgian, the dissident, the unfamiliar, the uncomfortable, the intersections, the tension, I needed to enter through a way of being and knowing that makes sense to me and represents my world view (Lorde, 2007). Aside from my personal preference of knowing through music, I believe that all arts disciplines are beneficial in promoting a concept of unity that does not denote homogeneity, but instead of harmony, as defined as a simultaneous existence of more than one entity.
Operationally, it rejects polarizing binaries and opts instead for an intentional study of the tensions that lay in between entities. Specifically, it seeks and dwells in the in-between-ness, in the tenuous intersections of agency and an organization’s structure as experienced by its ecosystem of people, its stakeholders. This paradigm models my way of knowing the world. As professed by Audre Lorde (2007) in Sister Outsider, ways of being and knowing become agents in either providing or obstructing access into opportunities of learning, understanding, and liberation.
To some the connotation of dissidence is enough to activate the arsenal. Economic, political, social weaponry is engaged, soldiers are called up to the front and anything remotely hinting at something different from the position of attack is categorically evil and wrong. The threat of something different in this scenario isn’t really a critique of the different so much as it is a critique of the same. In order to say yes to self, it is postulated as a no to the other. But what happens when this construct is diluted, stiff attacks are liquefied, and the dissidence that collects on the surface, like oil on water, is termed an appearance or symptom, thus skimmed off the top to reveal a discourse to which its phenomenon can be engaged.
So how to handle dissidence? For what purpose is the engagement even worthy? These questions guide the formation of harmonic agency theory.
A tender footed approach calls up the mediation of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) which settles dissidence as “disagreement” in the likes of an “opinion, character, etc” and in this effort offers synonyms as difference and dissent. Etymologically speaking the term evolved from Latin dissidentia to French dissidere meaning to sit apart or to disagree. Little more than the fodder for a boring seventh grade vocabulary quiz.
What follows is an overview of the aspects of the philosophical constructs that contribute significantly to harmonic agency theory. For the purposes of this application and the traditional boundaries of its format, the constructs are discussed in a linear fashion, through the structure of specificity and its resonance with the concept of agency. However, operationally, harmonic agency is not linear, but rather a bricolage.
Postmodernism
“…the metropolis is the site of postmodernity,
And the intellectual character most appropriate
For describing it is developed in postmodernist discourse,
Not in the gallery of human types
Received from the first half of the nineteenth century”
(Weinstein & Weinstein, 1991, p. 152).
HAT’s archeology is most broadly informed by the postmodern tradition. A hegemonic center is rightly fearful of its status; for power, Foucault states, is everywhere, “not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere” (Lemert, 2004, p. 466). This construct of power akin to the idea of perpetual motion resists the oversimplification of binaries, suggesting instead of forces interconnected (Lemert, 2004). The center exists immobile, fixed, and normed through the construction of metaphors spun by the writers of history. Derrida provides this definition of the center before juxtaposing it with his definition of discourse, which exists without a fixed center (Lemert, 2004). Michel Foucault extends this conception by infusing the role of knowing, as held in narrative and either maintained or re-appropriated as doctrine through education (Lemert, 2004). Therefore, education is exclusionary for the purpose of legitimizing the center. By legitimizing the center, a fear of discourse, a fear of another’s ‘center’ is fostered by reducing the space in which it can grow and critical thought can exist (Lemert, 2004). According to Foucault, discourse is an activity which requires entry into its fellowship, usually demarcated along lines of status. Thus discourse becomes a privileged sphere where power is generated through the processes of resistance and legitimization (Lemert, 2004).
Under this process lay the means of legitimizing a grand narrative as truth through the indoctrination of masses and a de-legitimization of countering discourse (Lemert, 2004). Specifically, means of exclusion, such as laws, distribution, and cultivation of fear, space for countering or new dialogue is squelched (Lemert, 2004). Foucault resists absolute truths, postulates that discourse is an activity or event to be consciously tended to, and along with Derrida believes that the signifier must be stripped of his or her codifying power (Lemert, 2004). This power to codify, which according to the postmodern tradition is power incarnate, is only possible toward existing entities (Lemert, 2004). Under this premise, the force of dislocation is already present by the fact that it is able to be named, indicating that resistance exists, but according to Foucault, must be comprehensive, strategized, and legitimized (Lemert, 2004).
As Foucault (1972) urges, “we must reconstitute another discourse, rediscover the silent murmuring, the inexhaustible speech that animates from within the voice that one hears, re-establish the tiny, invisible text that runs between and sometimes collides with them” (p. 27). But to enter into a state where such discourse, such engagement within dissidence is nourishing and critical, Sun Tzu offers sage advice in that “those skilled at the unorthodox are infinite as heaven and earth, inexhaustible as the great rivers. When they come to an end, they begin again, like days and months; they die and are reborn, like the four seasons” (Clearly, 1988, p. 69-70). Reliance on the “well-defined field of objects…a normative type of statement…a well-defined alphabet of notions…on the permanence of a thematic” extinguishes the unity of humanness (Foucault, 1972, p. 37). A strategy for justice posits, rather, that “our humanity is common but [that] it takes many forms” (El Saadawi, 1997, p. 126).
Foucault (1972) argues that it is precisely within the discursive formation, the ‘in-between’ or the tension that exists among discourses, is where margins are conscientized and become sources of knowing, and thus, consequently, power. The detachment of history “from the image that satisfied it for so long and through which it found its anthropological justification” is a necessary component to this conscientization of other ways of knowing and being (Foucault, 1972, p. 6). However, one must not interpret this to mean an apolitical approach, which is nothing more than a recapitulation of the grand narrative. Rather than humanizing, an apolitical strand of postmodernism relegates one to asking the discursive ‘why’ instead of the discoursive ‘why not’ which opens up the space for Habermas’ intersubjectivity (Lemert, 2004) and where dialogue, in a Freirian sense (1970/2005) replies ‘no’ to any apolitical tendency not as negation, but in fact as a ‘yes’ to the openness toward other ways of being and knowing (Peters, 2010). To grasp at the center, at the grand narrative with nothing but the emperor’s language serves, in the end, the emperor.
Also advanced is the notion of justice being perverted into a modern discourse through techniques of legitimization (Lyotard, 1979/1984). The modern narrative spins a climate which dampens sparks of ingenuity and dissidence, for as Lyotard observes, “the decision makers…attempt to manage these clouds of sociality according to input/output matrices, following a logic which implies that their elements are commensurable and that the whole is determinable. They allocate our lives for the growth of power. In matters of social justice and of scientific truth alike, the legitimation of that power is based on its optimizing the system’s performance – efficiency” (1979/1984, p. xxiv).
However, as Foucault would reiterate, resistance must be sourced from multiple origins because power and domination are likewise supplied (Lemert, 2004). Lyotard observes (1979/1984) that “the stronger the ‘move,’ the more likely it is to be denied the minimum consensus, precisely because it changes the rules of the game upon which consensus had been based” (p. 63). In this light, operations are more akin to terrorism than democracy (Lyotard, 1979/1984). Lyotard (1979/1984) adds that “it is now dissension that must be emphasized. Consensus is a horizon that is never achieved. Research that takes place under the aegis of a paradigm tends to stabilize; it is like the exploitation of a technological, economic, or artistic ‘idea.’ It cannot be discounted. But what is striking is that someone always comes along to disturb the order of ‘reason’” (p. 61).
A synthesis of these ideas, in contemporary times, places media within the context of technology as vehicle, space, and hindrance in not only the promulgation of orientalism, as discussed by Edward Said (1979), but also as a discourse of liberation, as advocated by Paulo Freire (1970/2005), Audre Lorde (2007), and Maxine Greene (2001). Historically, divisions and borders have been constructed for the purpose of maintaining traditional centers of power and oppressing potential means of resistance. For Foucault (1972) “what we are dealing with is a modification in the principle of exclusion and principle of the possibility of choices” (p. 67).
Democratic Education
“I know you said,
Can’t you just get over it.
It turned my whole world around,
And I kind of like it.”
- The Chicks (Not Ready to Make Nice)
A second tradition, of which is often attributed to the work of John Dewey (1916/1944) is that of a democratic education. Within this lens, the goal of education is for each student to reach his or her highest potential and that the role of the teacher and operative discourse is to do whatever it takes to make such potential a continual reality (Dewey, 1916/1944). Thus margins and boundaries are continually challenged, pre-ordained tracks of education are dismantled, and education becomes limitless. However it is essential to keep wedded the practice of reflection and action or one risks being denied democratic rights (Dewey, 1938; Freire, 1970/2005). For democracy, according to Franz Fanon (1963/2004) is not a place where one “is at constant risk of being disarmed by any sort of concession” (p. 90). Without liberty to participate in the politic of democracy, democracy ceases to exist, and is only a rhetoric for those in government.
Democracy rather, “is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience. The extension in space of the number of individuals who participate in an interest so that each has to refer their own action to that of others, and to consider the action of others to give point and direction to their own, is equivalent to the breaking down of those barriers of class, race, and national territory which kept men from perceiving the full import of their activity” (Dewey, 1916/1944, p. 87).
It is here where the work of democracy on one’s identity “means that the self is permanently engaged in a process of ‘losing’ and ‘finding’ itself” (Hansen, 2007, p. 26). This dialogical process demands open horizons, preparation toward navigating such openness, and the agency to follow one’s intention within that horizon. Hansen (2007) borrows from Dewey a perspective of the moral as way of keeping the horizon of openness, the space of dissidence economically and politically situated because it denotes the “willingness to learn from all rather than just some of the contacts that people have in life” (p. 29).
An assumption of pure morals can lead to grave consequences, according to Harriet Martineau’s Society in America as it can elicit a mindset that citizens do not need to be critical. Cornel West (2004) refers to the Socratic which “requires a relentless self-examination and critique of institutions of authority, motivated by an endless quest for intellectual integrity and moral consistency” (p. 16). This Socratic orientation, or Socratic hope as codified by Duncan-Andrade (2009) along with material hope and audacious hope, can combine to form a space for democratic education to arise and sustain. Ladson-Billings (2009) extends this to the political power behind interest convergence of which if oriented on the interest of justice, El Saadawi (1997) suggests could challenge the anti-democratic rhetoric of the neocolonial agenda that denies the role of political and economical constructs of an organization on one’s individual and collective identity. Additionally, propaganda affirming democracy will not secure the reality of one’s agency either, for propaganda is simply a latent tool of oppression to trick the mind into thinking that attendance is synonymous with engagement (Freire, 1970/2005). As stated by Freire (1970/2005), “to glorify democracy and to silence the people is a farce; to discourse on humanism, and to negate people is a lie” (p. 91). Here dissidence works for the preservation of “dynamic potential, energy that could easily be lost trying to hold on to a specific position or formation” (Clearly, 1988, p. xlii).
Liberation Theory
“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.”
- Oscar Wilde
The theory of liberation, postulated by Paulo Freire (1970/2005) in his Pedagogy of the
Oppressed informs HAT of how such processes can function. Freire (1970/2005) argues that liberation or conscientização can only be the result of one’s own work and that via continual reflection and praxis, a process termed dialogue, agency within a marginalized space can be achieved.
To this, Fanon (1963/2004) adds that “those values which seemed to ennoble the soul prove worthless because they have nothing in common with the real-life struggle in which the people are engaged” (p. 11). Fanon (1963/2004) holds a bright torch to the Eurocentric, Aristotelian observation that the border where dissidence is created, maintained, and felt most deeply “follow[s] the dictates of mutual exclusion: There is no conciliation possible, one of them is superfluous” (p. 4). In other words, in order for the colonizer to claim such an identity, the colonized must be inherently devalued, often by a dissidence crafted as a semblance, disguising itself as truth (Heidegger, 1962/2008). This haves verses have-nots binary is not merely a scene in need of Marxist treatment, but of a Critical Race Theory (CRT) and feminist theory as well. For El Saadawi (1997) and Lorde (2007) agree in that one’s identity cannot be separated out by unitary demographics as if tugging on one does not affect the another. The colonist placates the colonized, as did The Citadel to Derrick Bell’s (1994) Timur and the lowlanders. Rather, for Fanon (1963/2004) dissidence is a call to collectivity where the appearance of truth as perpetuated by the colonizers is subverted to the being of truth by the colonized.
This binary construct of dissidence however weakens the resolve of one who seeks other ways of being dissident, other ways of constructing dissidence, finding oneself caught up in the details of the discursive and blind to the events of the discourse (Foucault, 1972). A zero-sum neocolonialist stance is sustained via Machiavellian rule, where if pressed values fear over love. It is an exploitation of those who have nothing to lose and everything to gain, a sick mockery by the ruling class to control dissidence, and to keep political considerations in view, to control liberty (Fanon, 1964/2004). El Saadawi (1997) also provides skepticism of a postmodern treatment of dissidence if it remains in the realm of rhetoric without the context of experience. For she warns of the fallacy of fragmenting “others into mosaic” for intellectual play rather than for liberating change (p. 125). Freire (1970/2005), and Mehta (2000) agree with El Saadawi (1997) in that to keep dissidence within a context of liberation, language requires demystification with continual critical attention to politics and economics.
Cosmopolitanism
“Louder than voices, deeper than words,
The river is raging with or without this verse,
Millions of people are out in the streets,
Millions of people refuse to be meek.”
- The Makepeace Brothers (Hero)
The space that is advocated for within HAT, is well-described by the moderate, moral cosmopolitanism advocated by Appiah (2006), Mehta (2000), and Hansen (2004). Historically, cosmopolitanism has evolved through many versions, often differentiated most visibly by its practice rather than its theory. Kleingeld and Brown (2006) contend that its core tenant is “that all human beings, regardless of their political affiliation do (or at least can) belong to a single community, and that this community should be cultivated.” In general, the philosophical lens seeks to analyze the attachments and attitudes one has towards compatriots as well as fellow-human beings (Kleingeld & Brown, 2006). All versions hold “suspicions of closed horizons” (Mehta, 2000).
Appiah (2006) states that cosmopolitanism is not a solution, but a process that positions a person to face toward the tension in the margins of discourse and to find ways of engaging in its construction. Part of this process requires the recapitulation of terminology with attention to its political ties, for Appiah (2006) contends that no term is neutral and that this action will help mediate the challenge of recasting our beliefs in our relationships with others. Appiah (2006) further advocates for narratives of dissonance for the purpose of keeping one’s language skills fresh, values continually reflected upon, and other ways of knowing illuminated. For Appiah, “cosmopolitans suppose that all cultures have enough overlap in their vocabulary of values to begin a conversation. But they don’t suppose, like some universalists, that we could all come to agreement if only we had the same vocabulary” (2006, p. 57). And, those who fear conversation, are regarded as counter-cosmopolitans (Appiah, 2006).
It is crucial to remember that Appiah (2006) sets cosmopolitanism as a challenge to illuminate the contexts which objectify some people and issue power to objectify to others and postulates conversation as a means of dislocating the ‘othering’ discourse. Cosmopolitanism for Appiah (2006) is neither truce, nor a silencing of voices, nor meshing of identities so that everyone loses something, but rather it continuous renewal. Continuous renewal, according to Erevelles (2010) requires the following conditions: 1) non-crisis, non-trivial change, 2) radical, game-changing models of operation/organization. Otherwise, change is episodic, crisis-driven, and programmatic…otherwise, cosmopolitanism chokes on rigid misconceptions, political opportunism, and is mistaken for an end, not a process.
Mehta (2000) contends that such processes must be radical and be willing to destroy that which exists for what is possible or else a dominant structure will prevail. He argues that contemporary cosmopolitanism does not reach levels of hybridization, but rather acknowledges distance and difference. This form seeks to disarm critiques of its historical ties to universalism, and connotatively imperialism, and Mehta (2000) argues that “cosmopolitanism, is by contrast, a willingness to engage with the ‘Other’” (p. 622). This connects to Foucault’s characteristic of discourse in that cosmopolitanism must keep all things within the space for dispute, claiming no privilege for itself.
Mehta (2000) though remains pessimistic toward one’s ability to successfully communicate a rationale to someone who does not already show preference/association. Thus Mehta (2000) puts forth the argument that cosmopolitans need to address the limits of reflection, as much as the possibilities, and in doing so resist binary constructions and othering. If binaries remain foundational for identity construction, then cosmopolitanism produces an identity construct not too dissimilar to Disney’s Ebcot Center. For Metha (2006) is seems that it is within the person that hybridization occurs, for cultures are arguably more likely to evolve than an individual identity because of the persistent and encapsulating nature of globalization. By othering or focusing on culture (as a constructed entity) it will essentialize all those who either identify or reject the culture.
Hansen (2004) lends guidance on navigating such space, pointing out that cosmopolitanism urges one to have “reflective openness to the global and reflective loyalty to the local” (p. 195). Hansen, et al (2009) posit cosmopolitanism as “neither the individual nor the community…[but] Rather, it is the ever-changing space between what a person and a community are in the present moment and what they might become through a reflective response to new influence juxtaposed with an understanding of their traditions and roots” (588). This, arguably, offers agency within the tension between individual and cultural identity within cosmopolitanism expressed by Mehta (2000); tension is here afforded the function of a welcoming mat rather than an electric fence.
The horizon afforded by cosmopolitanism, as it registers all that which is subject to value claims by humans, is not a zero-sum environment, but rather serves as a “critical platform” for the art and science of reflecting on values (Hansen, et al., 2009, p. 591). In an attempt to seize cosmopolitanism from the thrusts of abstraction and to bring about its real-life, or sociopolitical nature , three offerings from the living arts are induced: hope, memory, and dialogue (Hansen, et al., 2009). The position of hope as “rooted in the present interaction with others and the world” (Hansen, et al., 2009, p. 595) begs solidarity with the notion of hope from Jeff Duncan-Andrade (2009) touched on briefly above in that hope is a participant sport in which there is no end time, only changing seasons, which holds out space, always, for another day. Using the art of memory “allows people to more fully enter life rather than merely regarding it” (Hansen, et al., 2009, p. 596) which, with hope create a tension that can induce one’s agency. This mindfulness is the aim of cosmopolitanism, to be neither closed off nor wide open, but rather dialogue is the opportunity and the method of dwelling in tension in order to shed a richer, more natural light on the past, the present, and the future (Hansen, et al, 2009). The tenuous space, most often identifiable through differences within and between people, is to regarded as a gift, a key to the door that resides behind the welcome mat. The cosmopolitan keeps these living arts as un-commodified, something of a task in an arguably highly commodified world, and it is through education this daunting yet necessary and freeing perspective is sustainable (Hansen, et al., 2009).
Harmony and Harmonics
“Don’t worry about what the world wants from you,
Worry about what makes you come more alive.
Because what the world really needs are people who are more alive.”
- Howard Thurman
Lending another layer of sophistication to this theoretical framework is the notion of harmony and harmonics. However, before preceding into the philosophical appointments of this framework it is important to provide a basic primer of musical harmony and harmonics used herein.
The etymology of the words harmony and harmonics originates with the Greek word, harmos, meaning “joint or shoulder” which is thought to come from proto-Indo-European construction of “ar-ti-,” and earlier, “ar-,” meaning “to fit together” (OED). Musically, harmony is designated by the simultaneous combining of notes and to discuss harmony denotes a discussion of the relationship between those notes. However, the denotation of the word harmony has become tantamount with its connotation, which refers to notes that are in accord, consonant and thus pleasing to the listener. This popular transfer was initiated with a primarily Western musical construct beginning in the 1500s (OED). Conversely, traditional Southwest Asian and Asian music does not distinguish harmony in the same manner because chords are not traditional elements. Instead of the 12-tone equal temperament of the octave (half-times), of which Western chord progression is based upon, traditional Eastern music utilizes melodic lines over rhythmic lines using a quarter-step tonal system, thus allowing for a harmony to be inclusive of sounds considered dissonant to Western ear (Leonard, 1993; OED, 2008; Isacoff, 2001).
It is important to remind though that the denotation of the word harmony is “the study of structure, progression, and relationships of chords” (Leonard, p. 60) and that a chord is simply three or more notes played simultaneously. This evolution of dominant lexicon, wherein dissonance becomes antonymic to harmony, demonstrates a hegemonic musical viewpoint of Western origin. Such thinking makes resolution the goal of dissonance, thus dissonance that which perceived as being unpleasing to the ear is symbolically labeled as undesirable. But in looking at the original musical denotation of the word harmony, both dissonance and consonance exist, these two terms representing the objective mathematical relationship between notes in a chord. It is a social construct that has place value in that which is consonant and fear or disdain in that which is dissonant.
Also important in the following discussion is the theory of harmonics. Within equal temperament, meaning 12-tones created in half-steps are constructed within an octave (eight notes) which is a dominant Western construct or within an equal temperament of 24-tones created in quarter-steps within an octave, which is a dominant Southwest Asian and Northern African construct, exists the harmonic (Isacoff, 2001). A harmonic series includes a fundamental tone (the original note struck) which then produces a vibration resonating overtones and undertones (Isacoff, 2001; Leonard, 1993). The overtones and undertones (harmonics) reciprocate the vibrations producing a sound of higher or lower pitch than the fundament (and only) note actually played, displaying an interconnectivity despite indirect contact (Isacoff, 2001). Because harmonics are audible constructs, harmonics and their dissonant and consonant qualities are best perceived by trained musicians (Isacoff, 2001). Thus the relationship that the listener has to the tones, in terms of familiarity, experience, and access determines the level to which the listener becomes conscience of this structural existence (Isacoff, 2001). Without training, education, experience, which provides access, the listener becomes an object acted upon, only able to react. If able to discern the structure, then the listener become subject, with the ability to act upon the structure (Isacoff, 2001). This notion is transferable to that of Freire’s conscientização of the world (1970/2005). Regardless of the note, discerning the harmonics is dependent on the conscientização state of the listener; regardless of the hidden, hegemonic structures of society, discerning and executing one’s agency is dependent on the conscientização state of the individual.
More so, this framework illuminates the interconnectivity of structure, especially those intersections not often considered nor often aligned, causing visibility and knowledge, creating the opportunities to use the intricacies of the structure for the attainment of the greater goal, which in the case of this dissertation, is the experience of agency.
Returning to the philosophical, this framework illuminates the issue of familiarity and comfort, rather than a structure of good and evil. It follows that by the validation of a great number of tones, a greater number of musical sequences and chords are deemed pleasurable to the Eastern ear. Furthermore, even within Western tradition, a musician trained on an instrument which plays in the treble clef is more inclined to hear and validate such lines of music when played by others. In other words, that which is deemed dissident is actually, more accurately, just unfamiliar.
Within this argument, El Saadawi (1997) suggests that the binaries perpetuated by Western discourse, especially within the field of education, learning and development, are structurally more devastating to one’s human potential than any specific micro-trend. Secondly, it is within this lens that the alignment of all stakeholders is illuminated. Just as where a single note is played on the piano, its vibrations interact with each other to produce harmonic over- and undertones. This reverberation, or feedback, is unstoppable, but only acutely discernable by the trained musician. Metaphorically, these tenants help illuminate the spaces of marginalization and the agency-inducing or agency-inhibiting discourse that troubles structural change within an organization.
Contrapuntal
For further illustration of this abstract theory, the contrapuntal advocacy of Edward Said (2000) is drawn forth. His work draws upon the musical technique of counterpoint, used by both Western composer Bach and Eastern composer Dar Krishna. Said (2000) draws from it the possibility of an identity being simultaneously whole (intradependent) and a part of another whole (interdependent). In music this can be illustrated with the following example: there are commonly four lines of music: soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. The melody of the piece transfers among the four lines as directed by the needs of the overall piece of music. However, at any given point, each line of music is complete in and of itself. Within an organization, this analogy can help illuminate how agency is negotiated by its members, how the space expands, constricts, or transfers power, thus adding texture to the margins of discourse.
This mode of thinking proves helpful in Edward Said’s construction of nationalism in that the legitimizing of truth is retained for the nation and a subsequent inferiority is cast to those outside national boundaries (2000a). Arguing against a binary which pits nationalism against, but also in dominance of exile, Said warns of the extremities of such a construct, instructing focus to the relationship co-constructed between the two (Said, 2000a). When exile is appropriated to the metaphorical, in addition to its physical reality, a “social and political history of dislocation” can be identified (Lemert, 2004, p. 642). This does not mean that such an existence is codified to any norm, because a norm suggests a center of reference, but by definition, the exile, especially the intellectual exile, is neither categorically outside nor inside the place of residence or the homeland (Lemert, 2004). Humored by unrest and a yearning to create a new whole, language is often the only trait permissible in this zone of multiplicity, where truth is subjective and passionate resistance can emerge (Said, 2002a).
Who is legitimated to talk, write, research about any signified entity? A Western construct of post-structural feminism would suggest that any signified entity reserves the right to deconstruct and then reconstruct any other entity, highlighting the complexity of Foucault’s adoption of Saussure’s theory of language (Lemert, 2004). However, while Nawal El Saadawi (1997) accepts the inherent power of discourse, sharing a passion for the breaking of binary structures from which notions of good and bad are formed, she fears a lack of justice as a guide into the horizon of identity discourse.
Where Foucault (Lemert, 2004) finds the identity as a whole non-assessable because of its lack of center which perpetuates a never fixed entity, Said (2000c) illuminates the potential of a contrapuntal knowledge of an identity that “gives rise to any awareness of simultaneous dimensions” (p. 186) and is located through “places of activity and praxis” (2000b, p. 214). It is plausible to note here a process of materialization, or practicality, of postmodern theory in terms of identity discourse. El Saadawi (1997) advances this contextualization through modes of dissidence and creativity. It is claimed that in order to be dissident, creativity is essential and that the amount of creativity require is in direct proportion to the degree of the struggle (El Saadawi, 1997). Here lay an intersection with cosmopolitanism as postulated by Hansen, et al., (2009) in that “cosmopolitanism derives, in part, from its time-honored respect and appreciation for human creativity at the level of social reform, of culture, of art, and of individual lives. All genuine creativity presupposes the value of valuing…[and] constitutes an expansive point of view.” (p. 591).
Multiple Ways of Knowing/Being in the World
“My idea of feminism is self-determination,
And it’s very open-ended:
Every woman has the right to become herself,
And do whatever she needs to do.”
- Ani Difranco
Audre Lorde (2007) and Maxine Greene (2001) add to HAT with their work in validating multiple ways of knowing self and the world, or in terms of the study herein, multiple ways of knowing one’s own agency within an organization. Such structures can be engaged, through arguably feminist and erotic (unfamiliar) methods (Lorde, 2007; Greene, 2001). Without access to multiple ways of knowing one’s own agency, spaces where agency might manifest risk remaining dormant.
For Lorde (2007) once the symphonic (harmony) and cacophonic (dissonance) is accessed, it is understood that the minor key, dissonance, is where space is created for an experience of ‘new.’ To enslave the minor key would be closing down the capacity for new knowledge and new experiences in being. The point is that without accessing this horizon, the fear of the unknown drives the status quo to rail against that which is dissonant, not allowing dissonance to be a place for deeper understanding. The ways of knowing and being do not only manifest themselves into self-exploration, but as avenues into social, political, and economic freedom as well. There is a parallel between the bridging of dichotomies in the personal and in the community. Dual-attachment of validation, acceptance, and agency in both realms is dependent on an inclusive, open-horizons ways of knowing and being paradigm (Lorde, 2007).
Picasso’s Guernica (1937) provides a dissident treble, 1) dissident in its method of creating art…utilizing cubist and surrealist technique which values multiple modes of perspective at one, 2) dissident in its content, outrage toward violent destruction and attacks on town like Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, and 3) dissident in its form of protest, visual art as opposed to mass demonstration, prose or verse, or speech.
http://www.museoreinasofia.es/coleccion/coleccion-1/sala-206-1.html
Ways of knowing and being then becomes survival, surfing the intersections of dichotomies and riding harmonic vibrations. Lorde (2007) discusses poetry, or poetics, as the space which validates the unknown and the pursuit of that knowledge. Poetics allows for the erotic, which according to Lorde, “is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling” (p. 55). In this uniquely organized space, the erotic allows for and encourages re(definition), especially of the word strength (Lorde, 2007). This often untapped source of power, this discourse, is a potential threat to hegemonic order and is viewed as dissident, wild, and Phrygian. As agents of change, the effect of dismissal or denial is the invalidation of self. What is feared from the Lordeian (2007) perspective is a continuation of women compensating for sexism, which impacts one’s agency, much like what is illustrated in Hochschild’s (2003) Second Shift.
Two traditions inform the dance within this space: feminist standpoint methodology and critical race theory (CRT) will help provide needed multiplicity to the dissertation study.
Feminist standpoint methodology. This methodology opposes modernist positivism and deductive theory. Specifically, it “rejects the modernist assumption that there is a single ideal knower and that he (it is typically a male) can know or describe one true and final correct representation or reality” (Ezzy, 2002, p. 20).
For Lorde (2007) constructing meaning must include all of the senses and asserts that the denial of any sense denies deeper knowing of the self, city, and the world. Lorde (2007) speaks in-depth of the personal narrative, extolling that if with honesty of limitations and acknowledgment of difficulties, the personal agent within can be awakened. To the narrative of one’s life, Lorde (2007) poses the question, “how do you read? Or, where do your words originate?” (p. 84). Freire (1970/2005) asks, how do you know the world? Here might arise the need to change the story, revise the premise, the environment of climax, the resolution, the damning definitions and castings of protagonist and antagonist and to reclaim the oxygen polluted by hegemonic and restrictive discourse (Lorde, 2007).
Critical race theory. Race is a social construct (Meyer, 2000; Omi & Winant, 1994; Waters, 1990). It impacts one’s subjectivity over ethnicity (Waters, 1990), it trumps de jure desegregation (Meyer, 2000), and provides another source of developing methods of knowing self and being in the world (Lorde, 2007).
CRT employs race as a way of disrupting hegemonic racist systemic oppression using context and a historical lens (Gollnick & Chinn, 2009; Ladson-Billings, 1994; Sleeter & Bernal, 2004). CRT adds to a critical framework in that it “theorizes about race while also addressing the intersectionality of racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression…it challenges Eurocentric epistemologies and dominant ideologies such as meritocracy, objectivity, and neutrality…and it uses counter-storytelling as a methodological and pedagogical tool” (Sleeter & Bernal, 2004, p. 245). The use of counter-storytelling is a non-dominant, marginalized voice which helps to provide justification and credibility to experiential ways of being and knowing (Ladson-Billings, 1994; Sleeter & Bernal, 2004). The methodology and subsequent valuing of storytelling is often discredited because it is subjective and does not relate a common experience (Sleeter & Bernal, 20004). However, it seems that this is the point. For the relation and alignment to a common, objective, and mainstream experience would be to perpetuate the story of the hegemonic ruling class, further negating the value of different ways of knowing (Lorde, 2007). CRT works decidedly against this and is “committed not just to describing the world, but to changing it” (Gubrium & Holstein, 2000, p. 915).
Jazz Improvisation
“If you hit a wrong note,
Then make it right by what you play afterwards.”
- Joe Pass
Lastly, in a linear sense, HAT is informed by the metaphor postulated by Gloria Ladson-Billings (2004) on the uniquely fluid power of jazz improvisation. It follows that in order to access the jazz-jam session (to enter into a discourse, an organization, and dance within the boundaries of tension) a musician must have a deep understanding (a Freirian conscientização) of dominant structures of jazz. However, it is within this deep understanding that also affords the knowledge of how to improvise in and out of the structure (organization), welcoming a musician’s wealth of knowing and being into the margins of jazz, which simultaneously changes its structure. In other words, the strength and depth of one’s agency within a given organization, simultaneously deconstructs and reconstructs its structure.
Cornel West (2004) posits “the improvisational virtuosity of jazz” as a lively engagement of the tragicomic tenant of democracy (p. 16). According to West (2004), “the tragicomic is the ability to laugh and retain a sense of life’s joy – to preserve hope even while staring in the face of hate and hypocrisy – as against falling into the nihilism of paralyzing despair” (p. 16). This blows in the face of the Hellenistic position, adorned by Epicurus, that valuing the alleviation of human suffering prescript the removal of dissonant chords between material and philosophical spaces, preferring the live of the removed (Nussbaum, 1994), as would be perfected, arguably, by the 19th century flaneur (Weinstein & Weinstein, 1991; White, 2001).
Barrett and Hatch (2003) stand affront to the unengaged, uncritical approach to life, such rules and fears, which negate the in-between, the discursive formations, and remind that “while one can define the line marked out by a jazz tune, playing jazz with groove demands more than linear types of understanding allow” (p. 4). The method of jazz improvisation articulated by Barrett and Hatch (2003) is “a commitment to stay engaged, a listening to the potential in unexpected trajectories, an intuitive grasping…an assumption that one will discover solutions as needed” (p. 5).
But this skill, this temperament to remain engaged with life, with tension, to execute one’s agency, is like a jazz musician’s ability to improvise sublime, “is dependent on the hours of rehearsal they have shared” (Balachandra, Barrett, et al., 2005, p. 430). This practice of engagement requires time with reading the self and the world (Balachandra, Barrett, et al., 2005; Freire, 1970/2005; Hansen, 2004). But how much is enough? According to Malcolm Gladwell (2008) it takes 10,000 hours before success takes hold. Therefore it would follow that by limiting the spheres of life in which one is able to practice engagement, improvisation, at the intersections of life, drastically affect one’s agency, or in other words the execution of one’s intentions within an organization.
Under the penchant for action, it seems fitting to conclude this chapter with features of jazz improvisation that Barrett (1998) lists as a points of access for your 10,000 hours: (below quoted from Barrett, 1998, p. 606)
1) Provocative competence: Deliberate efforts to interrupt habit patterns;
2) Embracing errors as source of learning;
3) Shared orientation toward minimal structures that allow maximum flexibility;
4) Distributed task: continual negotiation and dialogue toward dynamic synchronization;
5) Reliance on retrospective sense-making;
6) ‘Hanging out’: Membership in a community of practice;
7) Taking turns soloing and supporting
And in closing, as wished in the industry, break a leg.
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