Welcome to the first articulation of my new blog, column, book, lecture--or possibly all 4--which is my way of "making sense," through language, of our complex, often confusing, overly fast paced society in which hyper-corporatization is not only smothering democracy and destroying our beautiful natural world, but, just as nefariously, has created widespread boredom, a loss of authentic community, and a "flattening out" of human identity and personality.
It is my belief that only by actively resisting these trends, by creating some kind of authentic, healing, and truthful space (a "non-marketing" humane space), one that combines linguistic, pscyhotherapeutic, aesthetic, and political elements--either in the form of writing or dialogue or both--that soullessness and bland one-dimensionality can be transcended and real human identity nurtured into existence.
I put my money where my mouth is. As an English professor I unleash the miracle of human dialogue in classrooms and watch with joy as souls deadened by authoritarian, bureaucratic school systems percolate back to life. I've taught in this radical, experimental, outside-the-box manner--even though it's really ancient and classical, i.e. Socratic--at Rutgers, Montclair State, the City University of New York, Stevens, New Jersey City University, Essex County College, and a few other places. This spring, I'm delighted to bring my liberating pedagogy to Audubon Terrace in Washington Heights; a strangely beautiful, oddly juxtaposed marble outpost designed in 1908 to be Manhattan's very own "Greek Acropolis."
Following "the call of dialogue," as a disciple of philosopher Martin Buber and psychologist Carl Rogers, I've taken the "dialogic ball" (so to speak) and run with it, opening spaces of authentic human communication not only in classrooms, but in bookstores, cafes, living rooms, seminar spaces, and, for the past 5 years, in a television talk show I co-produce with my darling wife Claudia called Public Voice Salon.
Our guests have included such intellectual and cultural luminaries as public intellectual Stanley Aronowitz, Living Theater founder Judith Malina, historian Thomas Bender, and economist Richard Woolf. We've also featured many lesser known but deeply talented artists, writers, poets, thinkers, and citizens who we allow precious media space to enrich the public discourse with their innovative ideas, creativity, and stories. Sometimes I dialogue one-on-one with our guest, and, at other times, we assemble a "group dialogue" just like an old fashioned Salon--a la Gertrude Stein!
Similar to my teaching, the pedagogic goal of our tv show is to allow space for the human voice to "come to life" in a supportive dialogical space, to nurture a spirit of collaborative inquiry and encourage the telling of stories. Such dialogue, my hope is, will be enriched by talk of the various arts that have touched our lives in the past or more recently. I'm amazed at how easy it is to do this! Simply say, "You know, that reminds me of a similar situation (or character, or theme) in a novel I'm reading, or a film I once saw."
I wonder now, as I bring this essay to a close (yes, I do like to think of it as an essay!), if the erosion of human conversation in the public square these days--witness the new specter of "silent cafes" filled with sad and lonely laptoppers incapable of conversing with the stranger so close by yet so far away--is not, at least in part, the result of an educational and media complex that seems to grow more and more sterile, scripted, and non-dialogical with each passing day. Could it be that the bored channel surfers of the evening are the same alienated and silent cafe dwellers of the daytime hours?
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