Category Archives: text | wondering

<< When Critical is not Critical >>

“Traditions and ideas must be revisited and reworked, communicated and debated, entangled and disentangled. (Self)-critique can be carried out neither in narcissistic isolation nor in the silence of the ineffable. In the gap between acknowledging your echoing and refusing to echo, and the gap between one’s own pure voice and its simulacrum, critical educational theory of all persuasions struggles with words. Perhaps it is more critical when its loving words are addressed to others and when it harkens to their response, though in this case too, the teacher-pupil relation is one of articulation. For, to echo Derrida here, ‘a master who forbids himself the phrase would give nothing. He would have no disciples but only slaves’ (1995, p. 147).” —Papastephanou (2004)

Papastephanou, M. (2004). Educational Critique, Critical Thinking and the Critical Philosophical Traditions. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 38(3), 369–378. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0309-8249.2004.00391.x

The 2024 Tsinghua Higher Education Forum 清华高等教育论坛 . Institute of Education, Tsinghua University 清华大学教育研究院. The Beijing Convention Center 北京会议中心. 30th August 2024,14:25 – 14:50 Prof. Holmes, Wayne: “AI and Education: A critical Studies Approach

Derrida, J. (1995) Violence and Metaphysics, in: Writing and Difference (London, Routledge).

<< Gra'ma Memorabilia >>

I can talk inside my head:
conversations and representations,
senses quasi unseeded by bio-electricity off of peripheral nerves,
yet ever streaming,
having vague vagaries letting me ask:

can I talk with your voice inside my head?
thinking your intonations,
thinking your frequencies, crinkling,
your overtones, timbres, raspiness, tremors,
thinking your idiosyncratic metalinguistics,

thinking your pauses and synchronous body
movements, and what about those offbeat signals;
introducing Doppler effects
in your voice’s pitch: is your voice a parasocial interaction
when entering my thoughts?

as a non-illusionary experience,
considering that my human cognition
is not only switched-on when stimulated, prodded, prompted:
I can’t let machinery voice thoughts ignoring kinds of knowledge,
as intelligentsia summarizing memories where meaning is instituted

as a voice disembodied recomposed
by imaginaries I hear your voice inside my head
while you have long gone, switched off, decalculated, seized to exist
except then on carrier waves
in metaphysical meaning within cranial ceilings.

I hear you

                             —animasuri’24

<< Togetherness >>

If one moment you are calculable
that integer away from being retractable

decidably halted when switched off
deterministically streamlined

in brand, brotherhood and brothel
artificialized to believe abundance of choice

and programmed
for nagging and anxious urging since birth

you have become finite
and solvably collectively self-contained

in a corset algorithm’d by others
halted and stunned

while running
your tracks and rat races

as fast as you can, running:
that moving way you know

to stand out, running
following generated style elsewhere

you might’ve been tool’d
and yet, yes stilled and masked

you’re hugged
you belong.

                             —animasuri’24

<< Multiplicity Turns >>

If there is a universal.
there does not exist
a single, universal algorithm

—Do the Opposite!

enabling determining with correctness
for every possible program
every possible process, any mechanism

—Do the Opposite!

—existing or theoretical—
whether program, process and mechanism
will halt or run forever

—Do the Opposite!

on any given input
with thermodynamics and
Kelvin’s equalizing coldness

—Do the Opposite!

the universal
of non-existence
of a universal solution

—Do the Opposite!

of an all encompassing singularity
its non-existence in absolutes
justifies existence of divergences

—Do the Opposite!

any ultimatum attempting
halt or loop forever for all
has a likelihood to fail

—Do the Opposite!

with failure if it too submitting
is but a perspective
taken from intent

—Do the Opposite!

failure, ah soil for fertility, transcoded
is emergence observed
if not with certainty

—Do the Opposite!

that’s a solution
of non-absoluteness
by eating itself giving birth

—Do the Opposite!

a forbidden fruit, an apple,
a sin, a hack, a mod, a jailbreak
an affordance false, a law broken

—Do the Opposite!

turned into actuality of
life, if complexes of oppositions
do they loop or do they end?

Yet, if life
more than pathological programs
where pathologies

trimmed to a powder of hope: sneeze
doing the opposite of the opposite
of the opposite of a stone

infinitely consistent:
loop and halt
simultaneously and error prone

unanswering, do the opposite:

                    —animasuri’24

a trigger

Copeland, B. J. (ed.), 2004, The Essential Turing: Seminal Writings in Computing, Logic, Philosophy, Artificial Intelligence, and Artificial Life, Oxford: Clarendon
Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198250791.001.0001

<< Reify >>

They laid on the soiled grass,
stultified, neglected
as stunted models abstracted

as an extension tooled for convention
leaking redness for intoxicating puppies
across lowlands and in others’ theater of war

their maker of machines feeds bodies
to pose, to possess,
to position, to point

triggering outside the trenches
tending to tensions
in the minds of others

they laid on the grass
perverted in narratives
of misplaced loyalties to the greed

of the leather-seated voyeur
playing off-table top
life-sized mappings of life as 1:1 off’d games

life is small in their minds
their mind practices as meaningful,
their day-to-day actions blasted as grand

that others undertake;
these do not consist of,
and rather appropriate:

doing, talking, thinking,
feeling, loving, blinking
belonging delegated.

bodies, minds, emotions
social relations: draped and laid
on soiled grass to be

enlightened reified.

–animasuri’24

Some Triggers

Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford University Press. page 76

Wenger. E. (1998:56). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

<< I Shot Neutrality, but I did not Shoot>>

From the perspective of states or entities that could be acted upon, the potential to act is inherently non-neutral. Herein the relational in agency seems affecting.

The capacity to take actions that might alter other states introduces a dynamic that moves away from neutrality. Thus, entities with agency are viewed as having the potential to influence or change other states, making them inherently less neutral than entities that lack agency and, therefore, lack the potential to effect change.

Does this highlight that while the abstract concept of agency might initially appear neutral, its implications and the perspectives of those potentially affected by agency reveal its non-neutral nature?

If entering an awareness of being set in an acceleratingly expanding universe, or a multitude thereof, exposes one then the limitations of this thinking?

--animasuri'24

Triggers

Scoles, S. (2023, August 29). Will the Universe Ever Stop Expanding? Scientists debate what the future of the cosmos looks like and whether space will ever stop getting bigger and bigger. Online: Scientific American, Springer Nature. Retrieved on 6 June 2024 from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/will-the-universe-ever-stop-expanding1/

Thrift, E. (2014). Agency. IN: Teo, T. (Ed.). (2014). Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology. New York, NY, USA: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5583-7 page 62 on “Agency” and page 67 on “Is Agency Moral?

<< Flowers and Rocks >>

beaten drums
beaten competition
beaten child
out of future

beaten models
beaten builds
beaten students
down the street

beaten brainpower
beaten bees
beaten path
swept aside

“and be a simple
kinda man
be somethin’
you love n understand”

b’tween your beats
simply b’tween d’ drops
learn ‘bout somethin’ you
you don’t understand

b’tween your beats
simply b’tween d’ drops
repeat somethin’ you
you don’t understand

        —animasuri’24

<< Kindness >>

“Kindness is the transparent flow of energy between two beings. It is not given. It is not received.

Kindness simply is. The creative in a relational space.

And we should be open to this, for where kindness is, there is also joy… in all its fullness, smiling and laughing with us.

Kindness needs no explanation or auditability. There is no tension in kindness itself, only harmony.

Kindness is the proverbial Santa, it is the real bringing joy and compassion in its wake.

By allowing ourselves reflective access to our physical, emotional, intellectual and imaginative self we augment our senses with a powerful microscope of transparency.

Kindness brings joy toward us and others in our moment of escapism we have for life as an evolving complex paradoxical diverse and relational process.”

--animasuri'23

Thank you Evelien for the years of shared roaming a space of online kindness and for having mapped the above words with your touching and powerfully visual artwork. Yes, and for Bringing Out the Best in People.

For the reading passengers:

Follow Ms. Verschroeven on LinkedIn for her (educational, anthropological and many more) insights. For Evelien’s professional, authored and artistic work, visit and reach out to Ms. Verschroeven via:

https://evelienverschroeven.be/

https://medium.com/@evelien.verschroeven/bobip-bringing-out-the-best-in-people-a654b802c886

https://evelienverschroeventheartist.my.canva.site/

https://beeld.be/nl/kunstenaars/evelien-verschroeven

https://www.instagram.com/evelien_verschroeven/

<< Type Writer Fauna >>

Put a snake at a type writer
You’ll eventually read something
that stings

Put a horse at a type writer
You wait and see from
canter and gallops winnings appear

Put a monkey at a type writer
You suddenly have to justify
Shakespeare

Put yourself at a type writer
you become a silence monkey-horse
slithering well-formed minotaurs

among words with sweat, flow
as pearls for noses toil
against the forest’s floor

—animasuri’24