I Locating Living Pedagogy in Teacher

"Research": Five Metonymie Moments

Ted T. Aoki

For a teacher researcher, an insistent question is. "Where is living

pedagogy located?" Such a question invites a Lacanian anecdote.
Jacques Lacan, a noted but controversial scholar and psychoanalyst,
regards the situation of the analyst and analysand as a pedagogical
situation, a site of teaching/learning. But for him such a site is not merely
a topographical site of the doctor's office as clinic, not merely a social
site of doctor and patient, but more so a discursive site—a site of the to
and fro flow of language and discourse. For Lacan, the discourse of the
master doctor and the patient is inadequate; instead, he opts for the to and
fro discourse of teaching/learning. For Lacan, listening to "what" is
being said requires listening to "where" the "what" is being said. The
"what" can be interpreted in terms of the "where." To help understand
the where, allow me to journey through five Metonymie moments.

Moment #1: Living Pedagogy Midst Curriculum-as-Plan/

Curriculum-as-Live(d)

As one interested in curriculum and pedagogy, listening to Lacan's

anecdote, I recall Leonard Cohen, a Canadian, who in his poem, "The
Anthem," repeated the following refrain:

Ring the bells that still can ring, ^

Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack, a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in. '

' Leonard Cohen. (1993). Stranger Music, p. 373. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.
2 Curriculum Intertext

Enlightenment? Where? In the middle, in the midst of mediation?

Heeding Leonard Cohen, I allow the signifier "curriculum" to appear and
then allow a graphic mark to crack the word.

curriculum

curriculum-as-plan/curriculum-as-live(d)

IRPs (Integrated Resource Packages)

plannable/unplannable

predictable/unpredictable

(sayable) (unsayable)

prescriptive/non-prescriptive

In/through this graphic marking, "curriculum" unfolds into the

"cuiTÍculum-as-plan" that we typically know as the mandated school
subject, and into curricula-as-live(d) —experiences of teachers and
students —a multiplicity of curricula, as many as there are teachers and
students.
Here, I recall stories of thoughtful teachers who speak of their
pedagogic struggles in the midst of the plannable and the unplannable,
between the predictable and the unpredictable, between the prescriptible
anG the non-prescriptible. Their pedagogical where? —between the
curriculum-as-plan and the live(d) curricula. Sites of living pedagogy?

Moment #2: Indwelling Midst Presence/Absence

Five years ago, Dennis Sumara and Brent Davis, then co-editors of the
Journal of Curriculum Theorizing (jet), asked me to ask June, my wife,
for a calligraphic work to be used on the cover of a special issue.^ After
perusing the articles, which referred to scholars such as Foucault,

Reference is made to Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, Vol. II. No. 4. 1995.

 Ted T. Aoki 3

Lyotard, Derrida, Lacan, bell hooks, and so on, we decided on (yu-

mu) —presence/absence. Thinking I would be helping the editors, I
scribbled a memo:

Calligraphed on the cover of this issue is (yu-mu)—yu ( ^ ) presence/mu ( ^ )

absence. Yu-mu as both "presence" and "absence" marks the space of
ambivalence in the midst of which humans dwell. As such, Yu-mu is non-
essentialist, denying ihe privileging of either "presence" or "absence." so
deeply inscribed in the binarism of Western epistemology. As the groundless
ground in traditions of wisdom, the ambiguity textured in yu-mu is understood
as a site pregnant with possibilities. (The calligraphic brushwork is that of June
Aoki.)

Surprisingly, this appeared on the back cover.

What I have implied but left unsaid is the way discipline-oriented
discourses of curriculum plans are grounded in the metaphysics of
presence —privileging presence over absence. So valenced, the discourse
assumes the presence of reality or truth hidden in the depth below,
calling researchers to search and research, successful engagement
resulting in findings that provide insights into the essence of reality. To
research, then, is to represent the presence of the essence of reality. This
is the language of the discourse of representation which in Western
modernity has held hegemonic sway.
It is the hegemony of this discourse that Maxine Greene of Columbia
University questions in her powerful article, "Postmodernism and the
Crisis of Representation."^ She calls upon us to move to the edgy edges
of representational discourse, and, there, open ourselves to discourses
beyond.
There. Elvi Whittaker, an anthropologist at the University of British
Columbia, questions the "thingifying" of the presence of culture in her
noted article. "Culture: Reification Under Siege.'"*
Both Greene and Whittaker are writing at the edges of Modernist
representational discourse, questioning the hegemony of the metaphysics
of presence.

' Maxine Greene. (1994). "Postmodernism and the Crisis of Representation." In English
Education, Vol. 26, No. 4, December. 206-219.
'' Elvi Whittaker. (1992), "Culture Reification Under Siege." In Studies in Symbolic
Interaction, Vol. 13, 107-117.
4 Currieulum Intertext

Moment #3: Interplay Midst

Representational Discourse/Non-representational Discourse

Geography, Discipline, and Discourse

I now turn to Dr. Derek Gregory, a professor of geography at the
University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada. On his move
from Cambridge University in England, he brought with him a
manuscript ready for the press. It was titled: The Geographical
Imagination. The story goes that during his first year of teaching at UBC,
he became disenchanted with the manuscript and discarded it. Over the
next few years, he rewrote the book, now re-titled Geographical
Imaginations.^ In the transformation, he noted the multiplicity of
imaginations, and most acutely, the absence of "the," the definite article
in which is inscribed the claims of finitude, the presence of the finite. In
the new title, the definite article is discarded, and in its place are
indefinite articles "a...a...a..."—assuming indefiniteness and infinitude.
In the introduction to his book, Derek Gregory says he is now more
interested in the discourse of geography than in the discipline of
geography.
Here, I recall Trevor Barnes and James Duncan, colleagues of Derek
Gregory, who published a book titled Writing Worlds: Discourse, Text,
and Metaphor in the Representation of Landscape.^ Such a focus on
discourse and language urges me to recall Lacan in his pedagogical
discursive space. Allow me a brief excursion into sign theory.

A Brief Excursion into Sign Theory

Let's begin with de Saussure, structural linguist, who provided us with
an image of a sign as a relationship between a signifier (S) and a
signified (s), between a word and a concept of reality. For de Saussure
the signifier (S) has access to the signified (s) because the bar between
them is transparent.

(S) = signifier
Sign = (transparent bar)
(s) = signified

Derek Gregory. (1994). Geographical Imaginations. Oxford: Blackwell.

Trevor J. Barnes and James S. Duncan (Eds.). (1994). Writing Worlds: Discourse, Text,
and Metaphor in the Representation of Landscape- London: Routledge.
 Ted T. Aoki 5

But de Saussure added that such an understanding of relationships is

arbitrary.
Next, let's acknowledge Roman Jacobson, a Russian American
linguist, who claims that language has two axes—the vertical
(metaphoric) and the horizontal (métonymie).
Lacan with his psychoanalytic interest in language, recognizing the
arbitrariness of de Saussure's representational verticality, provided us
with a horizontal image, in which signifiers (words) are horizontally
arranged in a signifying chain:

S.. .S.. -S... (signifying chain)

(opaque bar)
(s) (s) is eraseil/absent

For Lacan, the bar between signifier and signified is opaque, erasing the
signified(s).
Thus, for him, signification is enacted in the spaces of differences
between signifiers. Meanings are constituted in the inter-textual play
midst signifiers. Here, language participates and performs to constitute
effects. It is a discursive world of floating discourse, non-representation,
with risks of anarchism and relativism. It is suggestive of the floating
world of hypertext with its virtual realities.
Here, we must not forget our key question: Where is living pedagogy
located?

Midst the Vertical and the Horizontal

I suggest that the site between representational and non-representational
discourses is the site of living pedagogy. This is the site that postcolonial
literary scholar Homi Bhabha calls the "Third Space" of ambivalent
construction:' the site that Trinh Minh-ha, a postcolonial feminist, calls
"a hybrid place.""* It is the site that David Jardine, University of Calgary,
calls a site of original difficulty, of ambiguity, ambivalence, and
uncertainty, but simultaneously a site of general possibilities and

See Jonathan Rutherford (1990). "The Third Space." An interview with Homi Bhabba.
In J. Rutherford (Ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (pp. 207-221).
London: Lawrence and Wishart.
See Judith Mayne. "From a Hybrid Place." An interview with Trinh Minh-ha. In T.
Minh"ha. Framer Framed {pp. 137-148). New York: Routledge.
6 Curriculum Intertext

hope—a site challenging us to live well.^ It is a site that David Smith,

University of Alberta, writes about, in his book titled Pedagon,^^
pedagogy in the site of agon(y). It is the site Derrida speaks of in his
recent book, Aporias}^ It is the site in which Marylin Low and Pat
Palulis describe in their article, "Teaching as a Messy Text: Metnonymic
Moments in Pedagogic Practice."'^ For Bill Doll, it is the site of chaos in
which dwell transformative possibilities. As for me, it is a site of
Metonymy —metamorphic writing, métonymie writing.

Moment #4: Midst Self/Other

A few years ago, I was immersed in reading The Malaise of Modernity

by Charles Taylor of McGill University.'^ He boldly claimed that within
Western Modernity, the greatest malaise is "individualism." I was
pondering about his remarks when Dr. Jan Walls, of Simon Fraser
University in Canada, invited me to a luncheon. I told Jan what Charles
Taylor said of "individualism." He told me a story.
When over a century ago. Commodore Perry of the U.S.A. "opened
up" Japan, the Japanese linguists were puzzled by the notion of a person
as an individual —an individual entity, a self unto itself with its own
identity. For the Japanese, a person is graphically textured as A (hito),
the two strokes saying that it takes at least two to make a person, self and
other together. The Japanese linguists were puzzled by the notion of the
undivided individual.
Moving into the space of interlanguage. and intercultural difference,
our Third Space, they allowed intertextual play and coined a new word,
•Y @ A (ko-jin), supposedly meaning "individual." Graphically, the Wi
in the first character expresses a past that can be isolated and boxable.

' David Jardine. (1992). "Reneciions on Education, Hermeneutlcs. and Understanding."

In W. Pinar and W. Reynolds (Eds.), Understanding Curriculum as Phenomenological
and Deconstructed Text {^^. 116-127). New York: Teachers College Press.
'" David G. Smith. (1999). Pedagon. New York: Peter Lang.
" .iacques Derrida. (1993). Aporias. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
^^ Marilyn Low and Pat Palulis. (2000). "Teaching as a Messy Text; Metonymie
Moments in Pedagogical Practice." In Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, Vol. ¡6, No.
2, Summer, 79-80.
'^ Charles Taylor. (1991). The Malaise of Modernity. Concord, Ontario: House of Anansi
Press.
 Ted T. Aoki 7

reflecting the isolated self of the individual. But, on the left, they placed
•^ (a radical of A ) and they added A (hito), combining to constitute
^ ë l A (ko-jin).
To us ^ ^ A (ko-jin) looks Japanese but it is not strictly Japanese.
There are elements in it of both English and Japanese; indeed, this is a
hybrid constituted in the Third Space.
Such an interpretation suggests that absolute translation is an
impossibility, that translation is always incomplete and partial, and
further that ongoing translation is always ongoing transformation,
generating newness in life's movement.

Moment #5: A Double Reading of a Zen Parable

A few years ago, I was invited to teach at McGill University a course

titled "Curriculum Foundations." I replied accepting the invitation,
providing I could change the title to "Curriculum Foundations Without
Foundations." They agreed.
In the course, we included an article titled "Haiku: Metaphor
Without Metaphor,"''' by German philosopher Günter Wohlfart, who
interprets Basho's haiku with the help of a well-known Zen parable:

For those who know nothing about Zen, mountains are but mountains, U-ees are
but trees, and people are but people. When one has studied Zen for a short time,
one becomes aware of the invalidity and of the transitoriness of all forms, and
mountains are no longer mountains, trees are no longer trees, and people are no
longer people. For while the ignorant believe in the reality of material things,
those who are even partly enlightened can see thai they are mere apparitions,
that they have no lasting reality, and that they disappear like fleeting clouds.
Whereas —as the parable concludes—(he) [sic] who has gained full
understanding of Zen knows that mountains are once again mountains, trees are
once again trees, and people are once again people.

Midst all this, my son and his wife, both University of Alberta fine
arts graduates, invited me to visit the famous art gallery at the foot of the
mountain down University Street. They guided me through the chambers
of paintings to a special exhibit —an installation of two paintings by

Günter Wohlfart. (1997). "Haiku: Metaphor Without Metaphor." A talk presented at

Simon Fraser University. Bumaby, British Columbia, Canada.
8 Curriculum Intertext

Gerhard Richter, a postmodern German painter. And there, I faced two

paintings on adjacent walls (see Figures 1 and 2).
After a moment of silence, my son asked me, "Why are you
positioned in this way when you are looking at the paintings?" I
responded intelligently, so I thought. I gazed in concentration at this
painting on the left (see Figure I), then shifted to gazing at the other (see
Figure 2), trying to make sense of the paintings. Then, he suggested.
"Place yourself in the space between."
So located, I tried doubling: listening to the Zen parable and viewing
the paintings simultaneously.

Figure 1; Gerhard Richter, Wiesental {1985)

 Ted T. Aoki 9

Located in between with my eyes leaning to the left I heard, "For those
who know nothing about Zen, mountains are but mountains, trees are but
trees, and people are but people." Then, following my eyes leaning to the
right, I heard, "For one who has studied Zen for a short while, mountains
are no longer mountains, trees are no longer trees, and people are no
longer people." So enlightened, one eye to the left and the other eye to
the right, I listened: for those who understand Zen, "mountains are once
again mountains, trees are once again trees, people are once again
people."
Son engaging father in teaching/learning? Locating living gazing?
Locating living pedagogy?

Figure 2: Gerhard Richter, Mediation (1986)

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