“Study,” “Otherwise Worlds,” & the Issues that Arise in Life

Meeting of There Will Always Be Soup, 2018.

In the first installment of Starting Out in Philosophy, I shared my thoughts as I was about to head off to college. I wanted to be part of a community of people who were eager to learn and grow together, being supportive and holding each other accountable. I also hoped to work against the injustices that are ongoing at the university – that seemed to be among my responsibilities as a student. Given my contact with philosophy so far, I was excited to study it and hopeful that it could help me live well.

Since I’ve arrived in Harvard Yard, the university has pledged to divest from fossil fuels, and the graduate student union staged a three-day strike. I was glad to be able to support them, plus the other unions on campus also in negotiations, and to find friends who are committed to working for justice. As time stretches out in dining halls, or in the compressed moments before jiu-jitsu club begins, my friends and I discuss social movement history, how much else needs to change and the kind of society that must be built. These conversations orient me toward what I think the work of a life should be, amidst the pressures of an elite neoliberal education. On a more intimate scale, I wonder about what it means to make community work as I spend time at the Dudley Cooperative.

Gathering my thoughts about college life as someone who hopes to live philosophically, broadly construed, I thought of Laura Nelson. She teaches my Radical Education seminar. Our conversations in and especially outside of class always spark interesting ideas about political engagement, community, and the university. It was good to collaborate with her on this piece. It felt as though we were examining and pulling at the edges of what that distinction means – “teacher,” “student.”

*

Laura: Thank you for the invitation to interview, Katherine! I’m grateful for the chance to think with and alongside you.

Katherine: Of course! Thank you. My first questions are: What is “study”? Where have you found it?

Laura: The most meaningful learning experiences in my life have happened on the edges or outside formal classrooms and universities. Instead of using the terms “education” and “teaching,” I’ve been increasingly gravitating towards the concept of “study”—a term I first found through Stefano Harney and Fred Moten—to think about these more informal spaces. I think of study as learning that is social, ongoing, and generous—learning that can move in many directions and doesn’t have predetermined end points.

As Harney puts it [in an article for Polygraph Journal 21 – kc], an important part of study is the “roughness, the drafted- or draftiness” of it. In study, questions, music-making, dancing, walking, and art-making are perpetually unfinished.

I’m grateful to have been welcomed into and to have helped create spaces of study throughout my life. In high school, I had an English teacher who began running an informal study group in the small window after classes ended and sports practices (in my case, ice hockey) began. A few of us would get together and read Toni Morrison novels, spending time reading aloud and dwelling on the passages that we found most moving. I remember how exciting it felt to come to this space, which was always full of love and a shared curiosity. Only later did I realize that we were “practicing study”—we were hovering together with the words, sharing what we were noticing and feeling and seeing.

As an undergraduate, I had a difficult time finding a learning community at my university. But by my junior year, I had found friends and faculty who believed that other ways of learning were possible. Together, we began running our own seminars. We hosted discussions in gardens, in living rooms, on farms, and within empty classrooms on everything from “The History of Slavery at the University” to “Can a Poem or Song Save a Life?” The very process of organizing and thinking about how to host these seminars became a site of study—one where we were collectively imagining what kind of learning spaces we wanted while working to build them.

Invitation to There Will Always Be Soup, courtesy of Laura; The Dudley Cooperative, courtesy of Katherine. The Co-Op is the only on-campus alternative to the twelve Harvard Houses, and a sign outside calls it the ‘Center for High Energy Metaphysics.’ ”I am glad to be part of a community that is small, mutually accountable, and takes on responsibility for the physical house and the community during weekly meetings. Learning happens spontaneously here, and often in the kitchen. I mop floors and listen in on a conversation about how time speeds up and slows down in at different points in our lives. Later, a friend and I talk about literature and the egotism of an instructor while she bakes bread. In the middle of finishing homework and hanging out by the dining room table, I take this photo.” - Katherine

I could provide many more examples of study, but I’m going to stop there! The words of Anna Tsing come to mind as I think about joining and creating spaces of study throughout my lifetime. Tsing writes,

Muddling through with others is always in the middle of things; it does not properly conclude.

I feel grateful to have met many people who have invited me to accompany them in muddling through questions, ideas, and texts, practicing ways of learning that are communal and ongoing.

Katherine: Study feels like such a bountiful way of learning and being, especially when I reflect on my own experiences with something similar: spending most of Latin class instead talking about Althusser, or discussing moral consistency with my roommates late into the night. We felt that these ideas were urgent and meaningful, but we gathered together to think about them because we weren’t able to do so through our proper schooling.

I am struck by the excitement you had for study, even at a young age. What allowed it to be so exciting?

Laura: I think that what’s always been exciting about study for me is the sociality and sense of community. During the pandemic, a friend and I decided to start a mutual aid-inspired lending library in Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn, New York. On Saturdays, we took a few hundred books outside and set them up on stumps or picnic tables. The books centered radical imaginaries, freedom dreams, abolition, and world-building. We called the project the Library of Study, and it quickly became a hub for gathering. Some people knew about the library and sought it out; many stumbled upon it as they were walking through the park. Eventually, we set up blankets where people could stay and read. Someone volunteered to make coffee. Others volunteered to print essays and poems to give away. The project quickly proliferated and became about more than a collection of books.

As more people joined the Library of Study, we began to think about what a community-based library could be. We decided that a library of “study” was not only about the exchange of actual materials (books, music, poetry). It was also about creating “social architectures” – to borrow a phrase from Manuel Callahan – for people to meet one another and collectively share in the exchange of these materials. We were interested in the library as a space that would allow for different social interactions, where we might try out different configurations of sharing books and ideas. Alongside the library, we began to host poetry readings, study groups, and meals. Although we hope to remain a space that celebrates and practices imagining “otherwise worlds,” what has always felt exciting about this project is that it remains open to new people and continues to take on new forms.

Katherine: Study seems labor-intensive and patient. But much of our lives are organized differently. How does study happen within our environment and its pressures?

Laura: For me, the work of organizing these projects (which do take lot of time and energy) has always felt distinct from other kinds of labor. I’ve been lucky to collaborate with people who are also dear friends, who are caring and attentive and generous. We all do the organizing work (usually alongside other jobs and commitments). Yet there’s a feeling that we are choosing it because we believe that having time and space to learn in community matters. Study has different temporal rhythms from traditional schools or universities. We can slow down with a project or text when we want to or readjust our plans to respond to what we are experiencing in the world. 

And yes, I do think study is possible (and taking place already!) at our university, though it is not always visible or prevalent in a culture where many people are incredibly busy and output-oriented. I think study can start small—in conversation with a friend looking at a poem, sharing a record, or talking after a lab about the ethics of a research project. During my time at Harvard, I’ve found study in conversations before and after class, in gathering with people to discuss texts off the syllabus. Even though these conversations take place within the university, they allow for imagining and thinking beyond the university. It’s not always easy to find communities for study. So something I’m always interested in is creating spaces where people can find others who want to join this kind of sociality and collective learning.

Screening of The Third Man for PHIL34: Existentialism in Literature and Film. “I was drawn to the course because of its focus finding tools that help us to live better. We consider what is wise in Sartre and Kierkegaard, plus texts that aren’t necessarily philosophical. Our professor’s work is interesting, too. He is interested in "polytheism," emphasizing our finding meaning through our local communities rather than through one universal meaning around which to organize life, as in "monotheism."" – Katherine

Katherine: I was glad to hear how learning can bring disparate people together. Study seems to benefit from – if not require – that type of community.

Now, thinking of the experimental educational projects you’ve taught at before, what role did physical labor play in the community?

Laura: Thanks for that question, Katherine!

Yes, I’ve also been drawn to and excited about educational projects that bring together physical labor and more traditional learning. A couple years ago, I taught at Deep Springs College in the high desert in California. At Deep Springs, which is also a working cattle ranch, students all take part in the labor of running the college and ranch – milking the cows, cooking meals, working in the garden, etc. – alongside taking classes and participating in self-governance. One of my favorite parts about being in this community was the sense that everyone played a part in creating the college. I felt a similar feeling in the classroom as well—our learning project was collective, and everyone’s presence and engagement contributed to how and where we could move together.

This past year, I taught a literature and film class called “Freedom Dreams, Radical Visions, and Otherwise Worlds” at a similar project in Gustavus Alaska called Tidelines Institute. Tidelines had six students who took one class at a time and then participated in governance and labor. A couple months before I arrived, one of the main buildings on the campus burned down. A handful of staff dropped other things to re-build the roof, devoting long days to hauling materials and re-constructing what will eventually become the main site on campus. Students joined in, and I occasionally went up to help after teaching my morning class. Being on the roof with colleagues and students nailing boards, sawing wood, and building the structure for gathering was a moving, communal experience.

Two different views of education: learning with each other through communal experiences, or learning from a genius (Left: Roof Construction at Tidelines Institute. Right: A copy of Pascal’s death mask brought to one of Katherine’s philosophy lectures).

Another defining aspect of these more experimental colleges and many of the projects I’ve been a part of is sharing food. Meals, as more informal spaces for learning about one another and continuing conversations over time, were orienting parts of the days and weeks at Deep Springs and Tidelines. In other short-term projects in which I’ve participated, food almost always plays a central role in convening. A few years ago, I was part of a collective called, There Will Always Be Soup. We hosted a series of gatherings, each inspired by two words (e.g. “margin / mire,” “woods / bewilderment,” “resistance / residence”). We met in many locations—on a lakeside in Oakland, up on in the Berkeley Hills, in a dance studio, and in an overgrown parking lot. We were interested in opening up creative ways to think about the language around us and the concepts we wanted to inhabit. The one constant of all our events was sharing a big meal of soup and bread. We thought together about the nourishment of body and mind, bowls in hand.

Katherine: That’s lovely. Thank you.

I want to close with asking what might be big questions. How you think about your role at the university right now? Where do you see yourself in the future?

Laura: Your last questions are ones I will likely be thinking about for a long time. I’m not sure whether or not I will spend the coming years working at a university or landing in other spaces of learning and study. What I do know is that I love teaching, not because I identify as a teacher in a strong way, but because I am always grateful to learn with and alongside people in a classroom over a period of time.

Wherever life goes, I hope to cultivate small-scale communities around shared books, films, questions, and ideas. 

*

So that was the interview with Laura. Sitting in the living room of the Dudley Cooperative, I thought,

Now that you are a couple months into your first semester, what are your first impressions? 

What were you expecting?

Has what you’ve found so far surprised you? 

Have I found spaces of study?

It feels like learning in this community when I mop the floors and think about life or work through tensions openly at the table. Plus, I’ve experienced moving exchanges while walking home from class with a friend, discussing photographs that startled us, or considering the edits we’ll make to our writing projects.

While my philosophy course has helped to clarify some of my views, much of what we talk about in class feels impersonal, far from the everyday experience of life. As much as I love thinking about ideas for their own sake, what draws me to philosophy is its ability to help me work through the problems that feel pressing here and now.

I wonder if discussing our own small-scale experience of the world doesn’t feel scholarly enough? Or maybe discussing it simply wouldn’t help us write the essay that is due soon. Are my courses the right places to try to work through the issues that arise in my life?

~

This is an installment of Into Philosophy.