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he reliable servants of any ideology they always ask the imagination to move beyond its usual confines to see the world in new ways 23 24 while it would seem drawing of president obama s sotu address and his call for american s to take seriously the unfinished task of american democracy that the imagination would be fostered the fact remains that educational policy has failed to cultivate crucial abilities to take part in democracy see k bernstein s piece in the washington post entitled a warning to college profs from a high school teacher nussbaum offers a list of abilities that she thinks should be cultivated in schools with such abilities allowing for a broad liberal education that simultaneously develops capable employees but more importantly informed citizens and happy people that can think and engage in the complexities of the world rather than merely listening to authorities these include but are not limited to the ability to think well about political issues affecting the nation to examine reflect argue and debate deferring neither to tradition nor authority to have concern for the lives of others and the ability to imagine well a variety of complex issues 25 26 while these are all abilities that could be cultivated in various spaces nussbaum draws particular attention to schools not because they can solve it alone but because schools are at least one influential force in a child s life and one whose messages we are likely to be able to monitor more easily than others 35 it is the school that has a captive audience for years as students navigate their way through grades subjects and school buildings figuring out how to make sense of the world themselves and the relationships with those around them physically and virtually the current state of education following nussbaum s argument does not adequately cultivate the ability for students to engage the world democratically it teaches to the test it emphasizes technical training or stem subjects while negating or neglecting the arts and humanities there is of course nothing wrong with technical training or stem subjects the issue is when any one approach to education or subject matter becomes the dominant approach or subject students are able to become smart in a specialized way but are not invited to develop broad based abilities outside of their specialization they are allowed to develop immense stores of knowledge about x but are not offered opportunities to develop emotional understanding imaginative thoughts and ethical relationships education when conceived as an economic and predominantly an economic situation becomes obsessed with particular things e g knowledge and skills while negating or neglecting other things e g enjoyment ethics this impacts not only what and how students learn but also how and what teachers are allowed or able to do given the political situation so what are we to do nussbaum offers a couple golden nuggets to help think about developing arguments for and the importance of the arts and humanities an adequate education for living in a pluralistic democracy must be multicultural which nussbaum means acquaints students with some fundamentals about the histories and cultures of the many different groups with whom they share laws and institutions 91 to live in democracy is not to agree with everyone but it is to meet others and to do so without violence and to meet others requires the ability to meet others one of the reasons why segregation is problematic and the opportunity to learn from and with the other the need for a complex curriculum good teaching in such a way she contends requires teaching children to see how history is put together from sources and evidence of many kinds to learn to evaluate evidence and to learn how to evaluate one historical narrative against another 89 while nussbaum uses history the example is for illustrative purposes as once students learn how to inquire and what questions to ask they can transfer their learning to another part of the world 92 this again is not merely to acquire knowledge but also to engage the emotion and imaginative capacities of living in a global world so that when one meets some other one does not react in violence knowledge only gets us so far as we also have to deal with human vulnerability which is often negated particularly for men by trying to have complete control the education that nussbaum is advancing then is perhaps simply one that involves the ability to see the world as a place in which one is not alone 97 education often makes people feel alone at all levels its focus on competition and success cultivates a skepticism of collaborating with the other so what is the task to disrupt this approach to develop an education that is not so lonely that cultivates collaboration that refuses to neglect or ignore the emotional side of things i am not sure it is a project that is perhaps on going and changing but it is a challenge that must be taken up in order to create an education that is democratic humane and pleasurable posted by a queer lens at 7 19 pm no comments friday february 8 2013 reading thoreau democracy and self fashioning i want to begin thinking about the insights henry david thoreau provided in civil disobedience and what his thoughts provide in thinking through democracy democracy is of course a contested concept that has had much written about it since the ancient greeks democracy can be conceived of as a form of government that a nation state develops through the creation of institutions laws rights all often explicated in a constitution for instance the american constitution in light of its recent independence sets forth the system of governance that will govern this new nation the development of the three branches of government legislative executive and judicial and the different powers each branch hold are written in ink and continue for better or worse to guide the experiment in democracy for engagements with the constitution see seidman s 2013 on constitutional disobedience and robert dahl s how democratic is the american constitution 2003 however i am not interested in the constitution and its framing of democracy as a form of government let s call it a legal framing and more interested in thoreau s framing of democracy as a citizen of a government governed by the constitution let s call it a citizen framing in thoreau s civil disobedience he begins by accepting the motto that government is best which governs least this is not a call for anarchy and the dissolution of the government but a challenge to remember it would seem that the government itself which is only the mode by which the people have chosen to execute their will is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it the government as was done in thoreau s time and continues to be done in contemporary times can be used as a tool for a few e g elected officials to do things that the people would not have consented to what we have with thoreau to be perhaps cliche is a call to arms for citizens to recognize that the government is not responsible for doing things but it is the character inherent in the american people that has done all that has been accomplished even as the government sometimes got in its the people s way this is not i would argue an attempt to do away with the government and the institutions it has built some of which thoreau recognizes as important and useful in his own daily life rather it is an argument to recognize democracy as an on going process of not only consensus but also dissensus now for those who are skeptical of call to arms or a theory of civil disobedience thoreau does offer a rather practical approach but to speak practically and as a citizen unlike those who call themselves no government men i ask for not at once no government but at once a better government let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect and that will be one step toward obtaining it the citizen cannot simply accept the government in existence but must develop an understanding of government the expectations and responsibilities of that government and make known such ideas so that such ideas can be debated and discussed within the public forum this entails a challenge to the idea of the majority as he writes but a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice even as far as men understand it but must be ruled in conscience what is this conscience that he speaks of though i would argue it is a challenge to develop autonomous citizens who think for themselves and do not have an undue respect of the law since that has led all kinds of citizens to do things against their wills ay against their common sense and consciences such a call for thinking is challenging of course as it opens us up to quite diverse and divergent possibilities but as morris kaplan 1997 notes in sexual justice thoreau situates the struggle for justice within the individual s negotiation of her own conflicting desires 177 there is no clear cut answer there are conflicting desires and demands but citizens must work through those rather than simply be taken by the government s thoughts on such matters and in neoliberal times of which we already see in thoreau s day and age this requires a trenchant challenge to the economic arguments in favor of humanity thoreau writes regarding the existence of slavery and the need to abolish it that the opponents to a reform are not a hundred thousand politicians at the south but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here who are more interested in commerce and agriculture that they are in humanity while it may be easier to blame politicians for not doing something like abolishing slavery thoreau s challenge is to the everyday citizen who allows it to exist asking what is the price current of an honest man and patriot today with a response of they hesitate and they regret and sometimes they petition but they do nothing in earnest and with effect they will wait well disposed for others to remedy the evil that they may no longer have to regret thoreau finds such an approach problematic hence why he theorizes democracy through the acts of civil disobedience and with such a theory one might be a bit overwhelmed in this age of 24 hour news and a machinery that is much bigger and more complex that thoreau could have imagined thoreau realized this writing it is not man s duty as a matter of course to devote himself to the eradication of any even the most enormous wrong he may still properly have other concerns to engage him but it is his duty at least to wash his hands of it and if he gives it no thought longer not to give it practically his support continuing if i devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations i must first see at least that i do not pursue them sitting upon another man s shoulders i must get off him first that he may pursue his contemplations too such an approach is challenging it requires vigilance and respect for others and arguably it challenges the concept of competition in favor of collaboration and compromise how do we pursue our goals our thoughts without doing so at the detriment of others is it possible even or a mere pipe dream for thoreau it was a way of life he himself being imprisoned for his refusal to pay taxes he did not feel were just he faced the consequences of his decision but he cultivated a democratic sensibility that allowed him to do democracy through contesting it as kaplan writes thoreau s texts are queer in this insistence on the centrality of nonconformity to democratic politics and on the idiosyncrsy conflict and recalcitrance of desire in the ethics of self making 177 dissenting from democracy and cultivating the self through the doing of and thinking through issues was not the goal though for thoreau writes i do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation i do not wish to split hairs to make find distinctions or set myself up as better than my neighbors i seek rather i may say even an excuse for conforming to the laws of the land i am but too ready to conform to them indeed i have reason to suspect myself on this head and each year as the tax gatherer comes round i find myself disposed to review the acts and position of the general and state governments and the spirit of the people to discover a pretext for conformity he believes that through actions through cultivating a democratic self things may change and when they do he will embrace and conform to them with of course the understanding the sensibility that he will remain vigilant and continue to engage the democratic struggle for governing the self relating to the other and living humanely i end where thoreau ends with both a recognition and the imagination he writes there will never be a really free and enlightened state until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power from which all its own power and authority are derived and treats him accordingly i please myself with imagining a state at least which can afford to be just to all men and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor which even world not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it not meddling with it nor embraced by it who are fulfilled by all the duties of neighbors and fellow men a state which bore this kind of fruit and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious state which also i have imagined but not yet anywhere seen in this attempt to develop a theory of civil disobedience then thoreau challenges his readers to take responsibility for the world they live in and see democracy not as a form of government that through voting we participate in but democracy as an opportunity to fashion a self under the assumption that humans are free and have intelligence to cultivate a way of life a self and relations with others that are complicated challenging but hopefully fulfilling joyful and dutiful references kaplan m b 1997 sexual justice democratic citizenship and the politics of desire new york routledge thoreau h d 1849 civil disobedience accessed at http thoreau eserver org civil html posted by a queer lens at 9 41 am no comments thursday january 24 2013 thinking through rancière and his hatred of democracy democracy in the sense of the power of the people the power of those who have no special entitlement to exercise power is the very basis of what makes politics thinkable rancière 2011 79 alexis de tocqueville in 1853 wrote i accept the intellectual rationale for democratic institutions but i am instinctively an aristocrat in the sense that i contemn and fear the crowd i dearly love liberty and respect for rights but not democracy new york daily tribune june 25th 1853 as cited by bensaid 2011 while a prolific political thinker most well known for his two volume set democracy in america we see in this ...