The Surface of Knowledge
We state that the scenarios of infinite postponement of knowledge in the setting of educational institutions are fraudulent. If knowledge is to be accessed, it has to be produced. There is no knowledge to be gained from the tertiary consumption of experiences. What the system offers us as the range of depth to delve into is only a tactic of deference that does not offer any respite from the compulsion to seek.
The insistence of the system to propel us into a perpetual state of becoming is problem.
The Surfatial University fulfils the persistent craving for knowledge that abounds. We do away with the self-serving model of plunging learners into never-ending self-doubt, chasing and the persistence of illusory depth. We offer the flat surface of knowledge as an entity which offers no sequentiality, that becomes an end in itself. The flatness of the surfaces that we offer have no deformities of terrain and no possibilities for the emergence of shadows. The avoidance of shadows allows a genuine chance for shadows to be considered. The university gathers around itself, a community that doesn't squint in the pursuit of some imagined pot of gold but rather one that allows itself to surrender to the moment at hand.
The emergence of knowledge has no role envisaged for the learner. There is nothing to do. There is nothing to be pursued. If the reluctance to be locked into a cycle of productivity is anything to be named, we would name it the main factor.
We have to deny the existence of all other portals of noise that claim to lead to knowledge. Because these portals have only deflected the expectations and responsibilities projected on them and tried to instead reject the possibility of any knowledge at all. Immersion in disappointment, cynicism and a celebration of the hoarse voice of drunken passion has been encouraged. The surface of knowledge has become a spectacle. There is no intrinsic pleasure left to discover in the possibility of…
Pedagogy is a dysfunctional science. It only works as a kind of epidemic. It works like a garage that has to focus on breaking things really bad for them to be fixed in another garage. This breakage-focused garage is where tactical analysis is done and the space for intervention is figured out. What works? Can it be broken? Breakage is a means of opening up things at their seams and marking out points for taking potshots. For any pedagogy to be verified it should be tested by being deployed in…
Knowledge is the unstated synthesis of the current moment produced in a continuous, ongoing process. It is a compilation not of a pre-produced byte-code but of the raw fragments of experience of the present. The compilation is from the source of experience of the present to the bitstream of memory that can be easily and broadly accessed. Time is a very important parameter of knowledge. You cannot read books written thirty years before. You have to read books written yesterday. If access to…
Access needs to be universal. Not as a gesture of democracy that leaks generosity, goodwill and inclusiveness but as a mechanism of distribution and pragmatics of production. If there is no guarantee of universal consumption, how can we encode messages presuming everyone is going to receive them? Access needs to be universal because the surface density of the surfaces that we bake is very high; and, if we consider that every exposure of a message wears it off and exhausts it a little, then the…
Scanning is an inferior optic process. It accesses through a surface grazing just the key concepts of a text but not any other. Any given text is more than just a sum of its key points. There are hidden nuggets which can be accessed only on deep reading. And scanning is not deep reading. Scanning is insulting to the text. The angst of recurrent insult builds up and eventually comes lashing out at the moment of eventual transmission. The point when a set of eyeballs actually manage to read the…
