On being a scholar/activist: Personal history and acquired wisdom

Abstract

Requests to publicly think about what one has learned over time are always interesting to me. They require that authors reflect back on a trajectory that may not be totally clear even to the writers themselves. They ask writers to construct an historical narrative that is simultaneously both personal and intellectual/political. In this “acquired wisdom” essay, I want to engage with this combined task, to reflect on some of the political/intellectual/educational history of the development of my work over time, on some of the most important things I have learned, and on the situations and processes that made this more likely.  At the same time, I want to situate this development in some of the more personal groundings that might explain how and why the work I’ve done came about.

Let me begin with some general points that bear on my later comments about my grounding in politically engaged educational efforts. There are two fundamental motivations behind such critical work. The first is understanding the complex dynamics of exploitation, domination, and subordination that all too often structure our societies and their constitutive relations inside and outside of education. Yet, while understanding is absolutely crucial, it is not sufficient. Emerging out of such understandings is a commitment to interruption. Both understanding and interruption have their basis in a set of ethical and political commitments that are simultaneously collective and personal (Bourdieu, 2003). And both are crucial to me.