Transcript Occupying the Third Space: The Writer, the Book and the Reader

Occupying the Third Space: The Writer,
the Book and the Reader
Nhlanhla Maake
LIASA – CICD Winter Seminar
29 June – 1 July 2009
This discussion and thoughts in progress seek to
address the space of the writer, the book and the
reader in South African society in the twenty-first
century, primarily within the education system
and the broader social and economic
context. South Africa, especially after 1994, has
been besieged by contending demands which
make legitimate claims of varying degrees to
limited material resources. As a result relatively
urgent needs to ameliorate the status quo in
housing, social development, health and
poverty alleviation seem to occupy the First
Space in government programmes. Other needs
such as job-creation, increasing
productivity in manufacturing and other
industries, seem to occupy the Second Space
in the hierarchy, towards keeping inflation under
control.
The a priori perspective of this discussion is that
given such a context, it often seems tenable to
marginalise, albeit inadvertently, educational
requirements, which at face value are not readily
quantifiable, yet should form the foundation of
every sound political economy, perhaps even
more saliently than short term considerations.
Thus the Writer, the Book and the Reader
occupy the Third Space.
The book refers to the artefact and its
intellectual content and every space which it
occupies – where it is lodged for access in a
public building or a private dwelling, in transit
(carried in a school bag, luggage etc.) and
anywhere where it lies; where its intellectual
content is to be perused, and by implication its
originator (writer), its producer (book value
chain), its custodian (teacher, librarian,
student, etc.) and its user (public).
AN OVERVIEW
• Problems of the profession
• Funding and resources from national
government and other funding agencies
• Uneven distribution of resources
• Leadership training
• Status of library and information organisations
such as LIASA, CHESA, GAELIC, etc.
• The charter
• What has been achieved (new libraries,
refurbishments, mobile libraries, container
libraries.
• Skills development
THE FIRST SPACE
• In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs there are two
main concepts, namely, primary
(lower/biological/physiological) –
the need to breath, eat, drink, sleep, control
their temperature, safety etc. Failure to fulfil
these needs may result in death.
• THE SECOND SPACE
• Secondary / aesthetic /higher/
sophisticated –
needs which have to do with love, affection,
appreciation, satisfaction, knowledge and other
abstract needs. These are not life threatening
needs and can, up to considerable degree, be
deferred.
WHAT IS THE RELEVANCE OF THIS
MODEL IN OUR DISCOURSE?
• Writing,
• the product of writing and
• the use of the product
(What space do they occupy?)
THE INFRASTRUCTURE –
THE SECOND SPACE
• physical infrastructure of education, that is,
physical buildings, material resources (chalk,
boards, the school bell, books, etc.) are higher in
this space, whereas the direct instrument
education, the book, occupies a unique space,
which I would like to argue that it is the Third
Space, unique in its own rights.
ALLOCATION OF RESOURCES
The First Space
• Government Departments:
Health and Social Development
Housing (now Human Settlement)
Forestry and Water
Safety and Security
Home Affairs
Defence Force and Navy
(Doctors, nurses, social workers, town planners,
demographers, soldiers, police officers, etc.)
ALLOCATION OF RESOURCES
The First Space (lower)
Public Works
Labour
Trade and Industry
(Builders, quantity surveyors, engineers,
plumbers, welders, etc.)
ALLOCATION OF RESOURCES
The Second Space
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Tourism
Sports
Arts and Culture (visual artists, actors, etc.)
Education (writers, books, readers, libraries,
teachers, librarians, etc.
(Is the degree of quantifiability relatively less facile
in this space?)
ALLOCATION OF RESOURCES
The Third Space
Arts and Culture
Education
Shifted from Second space by:
• physical buildings
• material resources (chalk, boards, the school
bell, books etc.)
SECTORS WHERE THE BOOK OCCUPIES
SPACE:
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Higher Education
Further Education and Training
General Education and Training
Basic Education and Training
(Is the book marginalised from the second space
in this sector?)
WHAT IS THE DIAGNOSIS?
• OUTCOMES BASED EDUCATION
• Information v. knowledge
• Skills v. knowledge
• Data v. knowledge
(Does allocation of resources undermining the
‘republic of letters’ and professions?)
COMPARISON
• CERTIFICATE OF MATRICULATION OF A PUPIL AT THE
HIGH SCHOOL AT TRIER
KARL MARX
III. Knowledge and Accomplishments
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• 1. Languages
• (a) In German his grammatical knowledge, as well as
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his composition, very good
(b) In Latin he translates and explicates at sight the
easier passages in the classical texts read in High School
accurately and fluently; after appropriate preparation or
with some aid he can often also translate the more
difficult passages, especially those where the difficulty
lies in the subject-matter and the train of thought rather
than in peculiarities of language.
c) In Greek, so far as the classical texts read in High
School are concerned, he shows knowledge and ability
similar to those that he displays in Latin.
COMPARISON (Cont)
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d)
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2.
a)
In French his grammatical knowledge is fairly good
In Hebrew
Sciences
Religion. His knowledge of Christian theology and
ethics is reasonably clear and well-founded
b) Mathematics. In mathematics his knowledge is
good
c) In History and Geography he is in general
reasonably proficient
d) Physics (and the natural Sciences). In physics his
knowledge is mediocre
e) (Philosophical Propaedeutics)
3. Accomplishments
a) (Drawing)
b) (Singing)
CONSEQUENCES
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No culture of reading
No interrogation of knowledge
No creation of knowledge
No creation of knowledge products
Dependency on importing knowledge
Dependency on foreign expertise
Dependence on metropolitan languages
Degeneration of production of knowledge
(Does this lead to ‘alienation’?)
WHAT ARE THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC
CONSEQUENCES?
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Weakening of links in the book chain:
Writers
Printers
Editors
Typesetters
Copy editors
Paper makers
Ink makers
Book sellers
SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES
(Cont)
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Book sellers
Book distributors
Freight transport
Libraries
Museums
Monuments
Exhibitions
Book Fairs etc.
(Contribution to the GDP)
SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES
(cont)
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Infringement of copyright
Infringement of Intellectual property
Depletion of Royalties
No Public Lending Rights
Degeneration of the knowledge industry and
knowledge economy
SATISFACTION OF PRIMARY NEEDS V.
SECONDARY NEEDS
• Short-term measures
• Recurrence of developmental problems
• Promotion of reading culture a a series of events
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rather than a process
Binary division between ‘high’ and ‘popular
culture’
WHAT IS THE PRESCRIPTION?
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Use existing models
Draw from history
Derive from landmarks
Back to the drawing board
Writers, teachers and librarian to be activist
custodians
Demystify books and ring it into the mainstream
ROLE MODELS (Cont)
What is the common denominator:
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Napoleon Bonaparte
Frederick Douglas
Mary Chisolm
Fidel Castro
Nelson Mandela
Wolw Soyinka
Garcia Marquez
Barack Obama
Mao Ze Dong
John Paul II
ROLE MODELS
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Sidney Poitier
Jane Pittman
Equiano
Winston Churchill
Karl Marx
Noam Chomsky
Albert Einstein
Julius Nyerere
Paul Kagame
Pablo Neruda
Charles Darwin
Oprah Winfrey
CONLUSION
• Writing
• The book
• Reading
(To be raise to a higher level – the First Space?)
ROLE MODELS (Cont)
• Zhou:
Zhou made his own rules of work. Thirteen
and a half hours a day studying, reading books
and newspapers. Three and a half hours
attending to his bodily needs.
Zhou Enlai wandered in Arashiyama Park,
where each corner was a vision of breathtaking
beauty. “I want to know, to learn from the four
ends of the world .... the scholar wishes to know
all things under heaven.... Should he lack
knowledge in one thing, he feels ashamed.”
ROLE MODELS (Cont)
• MAO TSE-Tung:
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Mao worked desperately hard as his lessons, and by the
end of the five months, he had made such progress that
it was decided he should be allowed to stay. (13) His
classmates, who had been quite afraid of him in the
beginning, adopted a more friendly attitude toward him
and before long, they returned his two novels which they
had hidden. Mao was surprised to discover that now he
could read them much more easily than he had before.
But of all the subjects in the curriculum, only his essaywriting was good. He received no marks at all for
English, only five out of a hundred for arithmatic, and in
drawing the only thing he managed was a circle.
“My three most notable students, of the several
thousands I taught during my six years in Changsha,
were first, Siao Shu-tung; second, Ts’ai Ho-shen; and
third, Mao Tse-tung. The three best women students
were Tao Szu-yung, Hsiang Ching-yu, and Jen Pei-tao.”
ROLE MODELS (CONT)
• Mandela:
He ended with a quotation lifted from Nehru,
which gave the speech its title, ‘No Easy Walk to
Freedom’: ‘You can see that there is no easy
walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will
have to pass through the valley of the shadow of
death again and again before we reach the
mountaintops of our desires.’
Mandela was more influenced by Nehru than he
like to admit: ‘I used a lot of the writings of
Nehru without acknowledging it, which was a
silly thing to do,’ he said forty-four years later.
‘But when there is a paucity of views in you, you
are inclined to do that.’
• I find television very educating. Every time somebody
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turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a
book."
— Groucho Marx
"It is what you read when you don't have to that
determines what you will be when you can't help it."
— Oscar Wilde
"Fairy tales, are more than true. Not because they tell us
that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons
can be defeated."
— G.K. Chesterton
"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a
misprint."
— Mark Twain
"'Classic' - a book which people praise and don't read."
— Mark Twain
"There is no friend as loyal as a book."
• — Ernest Hemingway
• "I cannot live without books."
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— Thomas Jefferson
"In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way
that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the
books through your skin, without even opening them."
— Mark Twain
"And on the subject of burning books: I want to
congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical
strength or their powerful political connections or their
great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly
resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to
remove certain books from their shelves, and have
refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons
who have checked out those titles.
So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White
House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House
of Representatives or the media. The America I love still
exists at the front desks of our public libraries."
— Kurt Vonnegut (A Man Without a Country)
• "No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which
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is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at
the age of fifty and beyond."
— C.S. Lewis
"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything
you need."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's
because you like to read. People that like to read are
always a little fucked up."
— Pat Conroy (The Prince of Tides)
"There are two motives for reading a book; one, that
you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it."
— Bertrand Russell
"Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They
are the destination, and the journey. They are home."
— Anna Quindlen (How Reading Changed My Life)
• "You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the
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history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me
that the things that tormented me most were the very things that
connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever
been alive."
— James Baldwin
"A literary academic can no more pass a bookstore than an alcoholic
can pass a bar."
— Carolyn G. Heilbrun
"A house without books is like a room without windows."
— Horace Mann
"You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches,
demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling
from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical,
absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that
need help?"
— Mark Twain
"Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his
aren't very new after all."
— Abraham Lincoln
"Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read
yourself."
— George Bernard Shaw
Le sale hantle
Totsiens
Nisale kahle
Le sale sentle
Le sale ga botse
Adieus
Goodbye
Nisale kwakuhle
Au revoir
Ciao
Vhasale zwabudi
Kwaherini