This week in Reflexivity

This might end up reading like a list. I'll just go with that.

Dr. Steier: I have something that I'd really like to write about which may be better suited to a journal, or one of these short papers we're to write or even the concept paper. I am unsure and will write you about it. It's been a pretty large part of my personal reflexivity (encompassing both my personal and theater lives) this week and believe it to be really relevant. Whether or not it's "scholarly" enough is debatable, but to me it is a very big deal.

* I really enjoyed both Kitchen Stories and The Lives of Others. Honestly two of the best films I have seen in a long time. Talking to a friend last night, we both agree that KS has the potential to be a great stage play. I will talk more about these films in the paper due for the coming week.

* TLoO took all but 15 minutes of class, so we didn't get to have much of a discussion, we discussed what the discussion wasn't and what we would write on. It seems as a group, once again, your instructions were tossed and hive-mind won out.

* Something about writing the Commenting on Myself post has made me feel more secure in the decision we just made to adopt another dog. I related it in a way to the idea of the single loop as found in both Pels' One Step Up and Siegle's The Politics of Reflexivity. Just one step, one pass, as opposed to allowing myself to fall into an infinite regress of self examination, doubt, and motive-sussing. I also realize I may just be attaching to the justifications afforded to me and the decision we took on via these articles, but hope the fact that I'm even aware that's a possibility means it isn't necessarily so.

* In a strange turn, I found Soros' The Theory of Reflexivity as regards economics easier to get through and digest than a lot of what Siegle and Pels were trying to say about literature. Whodathunkit. On closer scrutiny, I think I have a better grasp of those pieces. I really only got to understanding much of Pels after looking up Actor-Network Theory, which I was completely unfamiliar with. I wrote on page 5 of Pels in large writing that I really wanted more specific, tangible examples.

* I used to be a much louder human being. I liked to talk. A lot. I think I did a decent job of shutting others down - in contentious situations I actually enjoyed it. It became part of who I was perceived to be by all around me. "Larger than life" "ballsy" "tells it like it is" "doesn't take any shit" "cocky" - you get the drift. Like Borges and I, it became a split identity. I had to play that identity in certain situations where it was expected of me. This wasn't just out of fulfilling my role in the group, but honestly it was armor. I was safe being that guy. It also covered a lot of things underneath that wouldn't have been the best things for a group of others in their teens and 20s to see.

I have, for a few years now, really tried to train myself to be a much better listener. This too was for a variety of reasons. I wanted to listen to my girlfriend (now my wife) because I was genuinely interested, I wanted her to know I was genuinely interested, and I figured if I really took the time to listen to her I'd be better for it and less likely to bungle the whole thing. I also tried to become a better listener so that I could be a better artist-as-collaborator instead of just as Puppetmaster, and so that I could be a more effective administrator since I was simply overwhelmed with the whole he-said/she-said dynamic, particularly in a field such as mine that can be so emotional and social by nature. Recent developments here is where I am with the idea that I stated above.

This whole notion of Reflexivity here feels to me like a missing piece of my own process. Of tying together myself, others and situations. I already feel a splintering of "me's" past the objective me and subjective me that I used to base things on. I now feel a bit like me (who plods about the earth), Me (who others seem to interact with), (me) that's perhaps living in the space between those other two me's and a "me" that is attempting to look at and feedback upon these various me's like some sort of systems check.