Being in Intro to Ethnic Studies has encouraged/forced me to take a more active role in my own education and take responsibility for how/what I learn in a way that I am not used to. Something that I think will really stick with me going forward is the mantra "Question the question." Using this concept as a guide, I feel I can have a starting place to engage with some of the complexities that have been on my mind this quarter. I anticipate that this concept will be something I can always return to and rely on to point me in a productive and interesting direction, if not a simple or easy-to-understand-and-communicate one. With "question the question" in mind, I want to briefly discuss one of the questions from the Byrd reading that we talked about in class recently:
How might the terms of the current academic and political debates change if the responsibilities of that very real lived condition of colonialism were prioritized?
After taking this class, I don't feel qualified to answer this question -- I mean, that's part of the point; knowledge demands are everywhere, and no single person's experience will enable them to meet them all -- but I do feel like I can "question the question" (though in a slightly different sense than that in which we've been using the language for most of the quarter) and ask what many of the words used in the question mean: "academic," "political," "debate," "responsibilities," and of course "colonialism" need to be unpacked in order to understand what this question is actually asking. To me, "question the question" means doing this unpacking and, through that, gaining a better understanding of the big picture(s)-- of the framing of the question and the position(ality) of the person/institution/group asking it.
I agree that the process of questioning the question is a useful one because in order to apply our learning from this class we must wrestle with and therefore question the given. These givens can be contained in the normative definitions of words like you mentioned so in order to dissect their meaning to then disregard or use them with an understanding of their possible contexts and limitations it is essential to consider multiple perspectives. I also appreciate how you said that there are far too many knowledge demands to ever be encompassed by one person’s experience and I believe that this is true here. Though it may be impossible to fully understand a concept from an infinite number of perspectives, continuing to engage with the topic in such a critical manner while acknowledging the problematic aspects involved actually furthers dialogue as opposed to stunting it. It only leaves a more open space for others’ to share their perspectives as they deserve and to widen the pool of truths about or alternatives to the given. I will be trying my best to question the question from now on too!
ReplyDelete