Throughout

one searches externally for directional markers,
while also seeking meaning in a familiar sense of place,
and occassionally uncovers a senseofplace that
does not have to be defined in temporal-spatial terms.
Ever-shifting confluence of all pastandpresentfutures
re-configured into new belongings, when suddenly,
one's sense-of-the-familiar becomes the fold itself.
Ever-contiguous with the difference that resides within.

As Derrida-becoming-Levinas proclaims,
we are all other.

And although every aspect of a formalized education
(re)directs the researcher to disregard an intuitive approach,
to exclude those practices not scientifically sanctioned,
meanwhile, a new brand of renegade (Guattarian?) subjectivity
seems to be surfacing.

Which leads to what if.

What if an interdisciplinary approach to re-search
conceives
of new kinds of learning communities caught in the embrace
of education-as-communication-fit-for-a-post-digital-age,
envisions
academic research tools as technological agents
of educational reform, for social change,
and all the while,
ever-asking why resistance to new forms of research writing
prevails in certain research-oriented milieux?

A slam against the corporate wall.
Face forward.

The paradox of instituting change within an institution
is an act which cannot be governed by preexisting rules.
It is the inaugural moment of anti-institutionality.
The anti-institutionality of knowledge.
Notsomuch a contra-diction as vice-diction.
Ideas neatly stacked upon a ledge
and shoved off the edge of what one (thinks one) knows.

Which means, instead of tackling research agendas
like a reporter at a sporting event
announcing the play-by-play discovery of data
(assuming content follows form)
instead, adopting new ways to write
revolutions of expression.

Meanwhile, seeking classrooms-without-walls
while also drawn to scholars who question
the normative expectations of canonical research
and who inadvertently become academically stigmatized
for doing so. How (I am drawn to) all these thinkers who
belong to this description, each one well versed in
their own unique brand of interdisciplinarity.
One that affords them unconventionally holistic habitsofmind
and inclusive world views at the expense of their own
academic credibility. Rogue scholars, every one.

And wondering why this is such a threat to the institution of
the university, to the institution of its notion. Asking why
originality of thought in formalized re-search is such a conundrum
in any system. Why systems do not work beyond the borders of
their own familiarity. And why (I feel) the need to say this
againandagain.

A very Derridean statement, that. That systems just don't work.

And

o

that every specialist might be released from

"the stake in his [or her] own knowledge" (McLuhan).

In large measure, the expression of originality inevitably leads
to a study in dis-orientation and ultimately implores
(the investigation of) a philosophy of difference.


Outside, more snow is falling
and the point of this will also
once again get covered up with time.

But if you should ever ask,

"What communion hath light with darkness?"
(2 Corinthians vi. 14)

remember this:

white wall, black hole.

"And therefore, as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
that are dreamt of in your philosophy."
(Hamlet, Act 1 Sc. 4, Shakespeare)