Articulating the Taking-Place of Study Whatever Through Heidegger's Thinking on Language and Chinese Dao

• In Event: 29.071 - Communist Study: Theorizing and Enacting the Pedagogy of Critical Pedagogy

Abstract

This paper envisions a theory of communist study that, by enforcing a commonness against, explodes capitalist imperialism toward forging a new form of social collectivity. In order to do so, however, the author argues that we need to engage in global philosophical intercourse, venturing beyond the typical Western cannon. It begins by drawing upon Agamben’s notions of whatever singularity and language, and elaborating a labyrinth-like study experience not reducible to a linear actualization of a pre-determined learning goal. This iteration of study as a groundless labyrinth experience resonates with my own doctoral studies experience which is inspired by Heidegger’s thinking on language and Chinese Daoism.
Heidegger treats language as house of being, inverting our common take of language as an enclosed system. Heidegger’s thinking enabled me to encounter in China’s schools a prevalent yet silent “wind” language, i.e., “schooling/teaching/learning wind,” not reducible to a Western signification of “air in movement.” Silent, as they are naturally understood as linguistic metaphoric signifiers, trans-literally referring to “school atmosphere, teaching manners, and learning styles,” henceforth glossing over the cultural wind-education signature that exists prior to the signifier-signified relationship. However, my serendipitous wind-encounter set me onto a studying journey toward an unanticipated wonderland of openings and un-learnings, which I call a Daoist onto-un-learning experience, murmuring what the Dao De Jing says: doing learning gains whereas doing dao loses.
My Daoist onto-un-learning experience provides additional insight into the study experience. This paper constellates them for reciprocal understanding and informing, meanwhile holding that one is not reducible to the other. Specifically, with the “wind” exemplar, it maps out a couple of aporia moments when the taking-place of wind-language and study whatever ruptures my presupposed subjectivity and reason in relation to language. It articulates the ways these aporia moments can be made sensible through Agamben’s understanding of study whatever as singularity.
This paper recounts two aporia moments of the taking-place of language and study whatever. First is when I confronted the classical statement-definition of Chinese wind-character (feng 風): wind blows and insects gets germinated and hatched within 8 days. Why 8 days? Why insects? At that moment I found myself in the hands of language, not vice versa, as it stupefied my (our) representational reasoning of ‘wind’. The second moment happened when I was ex-posed to the Yijing guan-hexagram which has an image of wind blowing over the earth. Intriguingly, this hexagram itself zooms on a particular ritual-performing scene when the Son of Heaven already washed his hands but not yet given the sacrifice. The hexagram itself has nothing to do with teaching and learning, yet Confucius adds to it a couple of comments and envisions it into an ideal and contingent em-bodied teaching-learning movement. That is, I was accidently brought to the originary saying of Chinese teaching and learning. Retrospectively, my doctoral studies odyssey with the dancing “wind” is more of an encountered serendipity that can only be recounted backwards rather than anticipated ahead of time.

Author

• Weili Zhao, The Chinese University of Hong Kong