Lost in my own world

The pressing topic has been to come up with an essay topic and then start scouting around for material.  I’ve found this challenging as I could not seem to knit together the disparate ideas I had floating around.  At the same time, I moved offline and spent time reading, almost none of which is seen in my LifeStream, as I was reading print materials rather than online.  I hadn’t realised the extent of this till now when I looked back to see what I’d done.  I think this reflects an aspect of Digital Culture which was not pursued or examined on the course but perhaps demands closer examination: local context, censorship and fear of the consequences of exposure.

It seems to be taken from granted that the digiverse is an free realm for expression and exploration.  I’ve never really shaken off the knowledge that I am monitored and held liable to disciplinary action should anything I express online displease my employers or the authorities of the country I have chosen to live in.  So, combined with my natural inclination for caves, the LifeStream has been ill-fed this past 2 weeks.  What it does show is that I rely on outside stimuli to spark ideas.  The thoughts of Zombies or Medieval Scientists or the work of archeologists in the Sudan can take me to new places as I ponder what exactly it is we’re creating.  As ever, issues in items not showing up but I’ve come to realise that this is part of our imperfect world.  Just as lifts sometimes stop, ATMs run out of cash and there never seems to be milk in the fridge when I most want it, the LifeStream can judder and jam and spit out for which it seems not to care!

In his book, he discusses Andre Gide (indeed, the Frenchman is the inspiration for the book) with appearances by many other renowned writers of the early 20^th and late 19^th centuries including Oscar Wilde.  Wilde is described as being the epitome of modern and much of the book takes a humanist slant on the world.  Although a great deal takes place in North Africa, the dialogue is essentially internal or between the author and his perceptions of the Dead Authors.  He attempts to rationalize (represent?) their motives in doing what they did with their lives and it is intriguing that he is happiest doing so within his own head as the humans he attempts to gather with seem only to confuse or divert.

North Africa is at times a mere tableau setting, at others a catalyst for more thought and examination but, throughout the book, you could not say that we learn much about the thinking of the people situated there and certainly not their way of knowing.  They come and go out of the shadows, rarely saying much.  In fact,  Dessaix passes a remark on Said and acknowledges that his approach to the people of Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria perhaps indicates the “Orientalism” deconstructed and critiqued by Said.  But Dessaix counters his own comment by suggesting that the exotic-profiling reviled by Said has already given way, post 2001, to a different profiling of the region and its culture so much so that the charge of exoticism no longer applies (Post Orientalism?)

So what does apply?  The book itself resembles a hypertext essay if it were to be caught in print.  One can imagine clicking on the images or the texts within texts to be taken away to a new location where more would be explained about the myriad names, places and texts referred to (sometimes quite glancingly).  Yet the approach, the concept, is humanist in nature with its representational approach to people and places.  Zaida, his friend, is referenced throughout as the “Berber princess” so we can never quite shake off that she is supposed to behave in a certain way even though she doesn’t.  Religion is broken down into categories that attempt to separate or tease out the meaning from the matter.

Dessaix’ book is beautiful.  Reading it felt like sitting inside his head as articulate thought took form and made sense out of a life of reading, talking, travelling and examining.  But one small snag caught at me; what had the North African Arabs made of not only Dessaix but also Gide et al over the years of European encampment within their culture?  Dessaix is too cultured to fall into the trap of attempting to put words into their mouths let alone thoughts into their heads.  We are left with a non-knowing.

It made me reconsider my final assignment.  Having looked at a teachers’ online group for my ethnography and examined a teaching tool for my posthuman pedagogical task, I wanted to find something to pull it all together; a topic that had some practical resonance with my own situation.  Glimmers of ideas were bounding around my head and bouncing of my cranial walls.  I caught sight of them in the corner of my eye and almost understood them when I was paying attention to something else.  Then I read a paper on teaching Humanities in a Gulf Arab context and it occurred to me that this is what I could look at.  Not teaching Humanities per se but exploring how a posthuman pedagogy could inform online course design for my students.  At the outset, I believe that this boundary between humanist and posthuman is porous and, having taught for over 20 years, I’m robustly skeptical of the latest fashions that are going to revolutionise teaching and learning and all the bits that happen in between.  So, this is going to be as much a personal challenge as it is a “get it done” assignment.  In that sense, by posting this blog entry, I’m attempting to bring myself within the posthuman ontology; I don’t want to represent this as a topic but rather explore the shapes of the thing; matters of concern over matters of fact.