Ursula's PgCert

The Virtues of Unfulfillment: Summary and Interpretation

In this article Chien-Ya Sun brings together several texts/theories: 

• Platons Symposium and Martha Nussbaums reading of it;
• Lacan’s criticism of psychonanalysis and Mari Ruti applying this criticism to education. 

The usual interpretation of Platons Symposium within an education context was ‘the teacher’s role, embodied by Socrates, is to lead the students to on the journey, where at the end they see the limitations of their previous views, and realise the proper object to pursue in life—wisdom. The teacher is to be the bridge between the student and wisdom.‘ 

Nussbaum shifts the focus on the arrival of Alcibiades and thus reinterprets The Symposium as a DILEMMA. It seems, for Nussbaum, that Socrates’ proposal requires a denial of individuality. And the risk of following the proposal is to lose something essential to being a human. So we have, on the one hand, an educated person (in the Socratic way) who is able to lead a self-sufficient life, in which no particular individuals hold any power to sabotage his well-being, and, on the other hand, an open-minded lover who ‘remains determined to care for [the beloved’s] individuality’, but who risks being hurt (p. 195). 

Lacan’s criticism is that suffering is caused by incompleteness, and the solution amounts to the creation of fantasies—fantasies of a self-sufficient life that is not to be affected by things that do not fit its desire well. According to Mari/Lacan, we should embrace the ‘LACK’ and ‘incompleteness’, even (or especially since?) it seems counter intuitive within our culture of achievement. 

Sun synthesizes the texts in this way: The Lacanian idea of lack, I believe, provides a therapeutic perspective in understanding the human condition and its vulnerability, without an excessive anxiety in solving the problem. The human condition as such is recognised as a source for happiness and growth, which need not take the form of lack-filling. It then becomes significant to allow the space to face the vulnerability and learn to live with it. By problematising the idea of fulfilment and accepting Nussbaum’s proposal of seeing the Platonic dialogue of the Symposium as offering no solution but a problem (supplemented by the radical stoicism of Lacan), the achievement culture of current educational practice is also problematised. In so doing, reflection on these ideas opens up the idea of what ‘fulfilment’ is to philosophical critique. 

Maybe an interpretation of this angle within teaching could be to position notions around achievement and the lack of achievement within an overarching frame of ‘process’. Process always entails the dilemma of failure and success.

When working towards a pre-visualised outcome, it’s could be tempting to try to measure achievement / lack of achievement on a technical failure / success axis. But, making and learning about making is a creative back and forth process. Failure is actually desirable as it deepens the understanding of whatever technique is learned. Moreover, through technical failure you’re constantly testing the very fundaments of the project – how much is technical success necessary part of the actual concept? Allowing to have a lack of achievement, to fail, is in my opinion as valid of a tool for growth as achievement is. 

When I work with students, I try to create a space in which notions around achievement/lack of if, step a bit into the background to make space for a more explorative approach. When looking through the angle of exploration, failure and success stop being tools for measurement, but become equally important companions of the same journey. 

The only way to fail/have a lack of achievement is to not be reflexive of your learning experiences. When I speak to students about their projects, I try to expand the discussion from a ‘closed off’ goal orientated project to an ‘open’ process orientated project. As an example, when as student gives me an artist reference and says, ‘I want my project to be exactly like that’, I feel like they position themselves in the rigid achievement/lack of achievement system. Through discussion open up the project for exploration and I ask questions like ‘What exactly is it that you like about this reference?’, and once this is identified, ‘Are there potentially other ways of conveying/creating xxx?’, ‘Could you think of other references that have/are xxx?’ Through this conversation I hope to introduce and reflexive and observational approach into the project, which hopefully has more fruitful effects than ‘achieving’. Once the student starts working practically on their project, I hope that they work towards something they carry ‘on the inside’ rather than an ‘outside image’ and unfulfillment/lack/failure within/while exploring the project loose their negative meaning.

Sun, C. (2019). ‘The virtues of Unfullfilment: Rethinking Eros and Education in Plato’s Symposium’, Journal of Philosophy and Education, Vol. 53, No. 3

In this blogpost I want to focus on some key points I took away from ‘Chapter 3: Understanding Art: The Play of Work and Spectator’ by Vilhauer and propose how they could be interpreted in a (mine?) teaching context, taking a camera workshop as an example. I’m doing this following Tim’s and Lindsay’s recommendation of trying to reflect in our blogposts on our seminars, group discussions and readings from a teaching point of view. 

For this week’s reading we had to look at Vilhauer’s writings on Gadamer’s concept of ‘Play’ when experiencing a work of art. It’s a dense, academic, but evocative text. 

• According to Vilhauer, Gadamer considers viewing an artwork not as a passive intaking of whatever the artwork holds within itself, but as an active, interpretative work. 
  • Here, artwork could be replace with and piece of information/knowledge that I as a teacher present: students will always bring their own context, background and knowledge with themselves and interpret this information through their own personal point of view. 
  • At the beginning of the workshop I can ask everyone to tell a little bit about their previous experience with filming and/or if there is anything they recently watched and liked. This could help illustrating different approaches and experiences around filming and cameras.  
• When ‘Play’ occurs between several ‘players’, it doesn’t happen individually in each players head, but it manifests itself through the interaction of all the players involved, it is outside of them. It is crucial to ‘Play’ that it is a group activity. Vilhauer describes its central attribute as ‘Back and Forth Movement’, therefore ‘Play’ cannot manifest itself when being on one’s own. 
  • ‘Play’ is a conversation or interaction between students and me and my role is to create the space and facilitate this interaction, and depending on the situation, playing or more or less ‘visible’ part. ‘Knowledge’ can be created in a shared experience through interaction. 
  • ‘Play’ could be read as the process of interpreting and applying knowledge in a group environment. This could be a situation where students get hands on experience on how to operate equipment (after I gave them a demonstration). They work in a group of 3 to set up a tripod and a camera and film a quick scene. They rely on each other’s knowledge to work out the task together. Their previous experience and interests have been highlighted before, so now they can bring them in actively.
• Another requirement for ‘Play’ is that there must be ‘room for the freedom of variability – a variability that can only take place if the player’s moves are not identical to each other or totally predictable in advance’. 
  • ‘Play’ is not static, it is not a predictable task with only one, ideal outcome. This time I would like to replace ‘Play’ with the idea of ‘Group activity’. I feel like students get the most satisfaction out workshops that involve a group activity in which they create something together and can take it away from the session.
  • In the camera workshop scenario, ‘Play’ and ‘Variability’ appears after students set up the tripod and camera: now it’s time for them to assign roles (‘director’, ‘camera operator’, actor’) and create a very short video, utilising all the settings on the camera that we’ve have discussed before. After a couple of minutes, they swap roles. This way, they can see how each one of them interprets the role differently and they create a series of short videos, that evidences their shared effort and creativity. 

In the last session we were giving short introductory presentations on our teaching context, our practice and other identities. Additionally we had to discuss a piece of academic text of our choice. In chose to speak about the article ‘Towards a Rhizomatic library’ from a past Spark edition. I choose this article because I was interested in reading about student-led research projects. I curious to read on how students contextualise their practice. Starting with some spatial questions, the group researched on how libraries and knowledge in general are classified and organised. They created a series of workshops based on the ‘Rhizome’, a concept created by Deleuze and Guattari. Deleuze and Guatarri wrote about a horizontal and networked image of knowledge production. This led me to think about if I use outdated or obstructive modes to organise our departmental teaching materials and if there could be other, creative ways of doing it. We are currently using Moodle, Padlet and Panopto and the structure, functionality and interface of each platform invites for different forms of content shared on it. 
It was very interesting to hear the presentations of other members of the group and to learn more about their roles, responsibilities and concerns. Often we get caught up so much in our own daily life at work, that we forget that there or other worlds outside our department. Besides being a teaching degree, the PG Cert also functions as platform for exchange within the institutions across departments and schools and helps to understand the organisational structure better.
After presenting, we’ve been asked to take a half an hour break and to reflect on our experience in group. It was nice to be able to take some time and wind down after the first part of the session. The atmosphere during our group presentation / conversation felt calm and considerate. Having half an hour break also gave me the headspace to prepare myself for the second part of the session. 
Meeting and discussing with potential strangers in an online space feels obviously very different then in real life. It almost seems like it doesn’t recreate old, but produces different hierarchies. The potential for technical issues and the consciousness of being within your domestic space creates a different sensibility towards each other that I haven’t seen in real life meetings. On the other hand the temptation to slip into the ‘podcast listener mode’ is very much present, especially when the video function is turned off. I believe this is what happened to me in the second part of the conversation. We discussed previously read articles ‘Improving teaching: Enhancing ways of being university teachers’ by Dall’Alba and ‘Race and the Neoliberal University: Lessons from the Public University’ by Holmwood. In this part of the session, the I fell into the trap of listening to what other colleagues had to say, rather than actively participating. 
Key points discussed in regards to Dall’Alba’s article were knowing about teaching and in particular about notions on how to facilitate a space where students learn from each other. This brings back thoughts on the extracurricular activity I am currently involved in which is a shared collaborative practice. While facilitating the collaborative practice online works really well, unfortunately me and colleague tend to dominate the ‘feedback’ or ‘post-viewing’ discussion. I’m still figuring out how to open up the conversation more and make everyone comfortable enough to participate in this horizontal space we’re trying to create. 
In the conversation it was also mentioned that some students expect a teaching format in which knowledge is transmitted rather than collaboratively produced and exchanged and how as a facilitator it can be difficult to manage a plurality of expectations. This topic felt familiar to me because as a student I came from a similar background and I needed a while to re-adjust my understanding of the role of teaching, particularly in a creative environment. When working with students I’m trying to explain my role and shift the focus from me as a primary ‘teaching source’ back onto the students in class and the skills and knowledge they’re bringing with them. 

It always enjoyable to be at a lecture, no matter if it’s held online or onsite. The first lecture was held by Prof. Wisdom, who critically situated HE in a wider, mainly economical context. A lot of data and statistics were presented, from how HE graduates tend to earn more money in their lifetime, to the gender pay gap between HE graduates. Although I don’t want to downplay the role of economy in our lives, I don’t really like to think or talk of education as an ‘investment’ as I believe that using this language promotes neoliberal thinking. As Prof. Wisdom pointed out in his lecture, students are aware of their low chances of finding a highly paid position after graduating in a creative or soft science courses, yet they still choose to study those. If prospective students refuse to engage in seeing themselves investors that ‘invest’ into education, why shouldn’t we as educators follow their paths? I don’t think the educations’ main purpose should be to create future financial gain for its recipients, but encouraging curiosity and independent thinking. This statement almost sounds naive, but I’m not sure why.
Following this path of thought, I think that the question ‘Should the three-year, straight-from-school, living away from home, bachelors degree remain the dominant model of HE?’ should be answered with a ‘No!’ and ‘Would modular degree courses with part-time study and credit accumulation increase opportunity for more people?’ with ‘Yes!’. I think that the current BA model as described above, seems more like an ‘experience’ than a sustainable way of being. Besides studying, students experience being away from home and are only able to work in extremely non committing jobs, so the gap between ‘living as a student’ and ‘living as a non-student’ is very wide. Similarly after graduating, or ‘spat out a system’ many students feel like there is no continuation to their previous lifestyle. This realisation can feel so confusing to the point of being violent. Wouldn’t it be a more sensitive approach to give students the opportunity to start creating a more independent life, where studying takes a more tailored and modular form?
The second lecture was held by linguist Victoria Odeniyi on English in the online class room. Victoria mentioned their observation on how tutors switch their language very quickly between formal/informal or technical/general. Informal language is used as a tool to quickly create a shared ground and a bond in the classroom. But this can have an adverse effect: students who are non native in English, might not be able to interpret local expressions correctly. As a non native English speaker, I don’t think that I use very local English terms anyway. Drawing from my previous experience that as UAL student, I was surprised and appreciative of how informal teachers and students could express themselves. This definitely gave me confidence to speak up. I also liked when teachers used phrases that I didn’t know, because I curious to learn them. I had the confidence to ask teachers what they mean. This makes me think how important it is to reiterate throughout each session that students let us know if anything we said is unclear.

My name is Ursula (she / her / her) and I’m a Specialist Technician for Moving Image at Wimbledon. I hope to learn lots of new and interesting things about teaching and integrate them into my existing practice. I’m very much interested in horizontal LT techniques and how to break down hierarchical structures within the LT context. I’m also looking forward to meet staff members from different departments and exchange our point of views and learn from each other.