Self cultivation

In this paper I argue that an important task of career-long teacher education is the encouragement of imagination and creativity in experienced teachers. The task implies a reversal of the managerialism that currently afflicts so many European education systems. I begin by giving an analysis of pedagogical relationships to expose some of the reasons that teaching is an extraordinarily complex activity, which it is difficult to do well. Indeed it is so complex that it is not something that can be learnt in advance of experience. Therefore early-career teachers need to develop their skills before they can become fully competent. However experience is not enough on its own. To become excellent – that is, more than proficient – requires a career-long commitment to self-cultivation as teachers. Part of the reason that the commitment needs to be career-long is that teaching contexts are in a continual state of change, and teachers need to adapt through a process of self-cultivation. I suggest that there are two broad approaches to career-long teacher education: (1) closed, standardised, benchmarked and (2) open, imaginative, creative. While the first can be encouraged in the usual managerial ways, the second cannot. Openness to change and adaptation requires teachers to carry out a daunting, exciting, risky re-evaluation of themselves and their pedagogical relationships. I draw on examples to illustrate what might be included in imaginative and creative self-cultivation. Many of these use creative and imaginative forms of practitioner research.

Capacity for character: fiction, ethics and the anthropology of conduct Method acting is one of the most popular theatrical rehearsal systems, according to which actors seek intense identification with characters. In this article, I draw on fieldwork with a professional contemporary German theatre to suggest an alternative view. Rather than training to merge with characters, actors understand characters as a 'repertoire of fiction' they freely draw upon to compose themselves. Training for characters thus facilitates the capacity to detach and appropriate traits of different, imagined and real, persons. It is thus an active and reflected stance that minds the gap between actor and character, rather than a passive and predominantly embodied taking on by actors of fictional characters and their traits. Informed by discussions on the notion of conduct in the anthropology of ethics, this article investigates how training the 'capacity for character' can inform anthropological understandings of detachment, reflexivity and personhood.

In this essay, I briefly outline Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal recurrence that has implications for education, and life in general; and, lastly, I argue that from an educational point of view, Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal recurrence is best viewed as the great cultivating thought that has radical ramifications for any project of character education. Indeed, Nietzsche's concern with self-cultivation (Bildung) to a large degree brings together the central tenets of his thinking to emphasise an ethics of character that is meant to serve as an alternative approach to cultivating character or the self in such a way that it reveals 'what one is' now (being), and who they could become (becoming). In order to bring this about, Nietzsche does not conceive the eternal recurrence as a theoretical doctrine, but as an exercise that we incorporate into our lives as a habitual practice, vis-à-vis, through repeated and prolonged meditation, reflection, thought and dialogue on the significance of the idea in such a way that it transforms the individual for the better. Subsequently, the idea of the eternal recurrence only becomes cultivating and truly educational if it transforms our lives in such a way that we come to revalue the self as a work of art to a point where we are able to educate ourselves against our age.

The paper examines Qiu Zhijie’s multi-layered project A Suicidology of the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge (since 2008) and asks what is at stake when art literally and metaphorically is assigned with life-saving functions. Based on the artist’s assumption that today’s social and political reality as well as its subjects are historically constructed the article conceives of the Nanjing Bridge as an embodiment of a historically constituted contemporary Chinese reality. Through close readings of the works as well as analyses of theoretical writings by Qiu Zhijie the article scrutinises the relationship Total Art assumes between the social and the aesthetic realm and examines the premises and strategies the artist adopts in order to produce socially and aesthetically e ective art that keeps ‘alive’.

Islamic education and existential learning is directed at purifying the self (nafs) and the cultivation of certitude (yaqîn). A central aspiration in the learning process is to become an intimate friend of Allah (a walî), who embodies the prophetic presence (istihdâr al-nûr al-muhammadiyya) and who by that presence directs other people to Islam. This article uncovers life and learning in a leading Islamic institution of learning and analyzes the processes of self-transformation and education that constitute the foundation for the rise of a walî. It is based on my work on the Bâ´Alawî tradition, one of the most influential Islamic traditions of learning and self-cultivation in the present age, since 2006 and in particular on my visit to the Islamic university Dar al-Mustafa in Yemen during the summer and the fall of 2011. The paradoxical tension between Sufism’s ideal of ascetic seclusion on one hand, and the extremely hectic and much courted social lifestyle of leading Sufis on the other, is discussed. It is suggested that the cultivation of a prophetic will to direct others to Islam is the key to understanding this tension.

Korean ki suryŏn (氣修練 cultivation of body and mind using ki-life energy) is becoming more popular internationally. GiCheon (氣天), a particular type of ki suryŏn, is portrayed here as an alchemical practice of embodied knowledge. The term ‘technologies of the self’ (from Michel Foucault) means practices of the self, but here also includes technical tools, such as videos, DVDs, films, and websites. This paper will show how the visual iconography of DVDs advertising GiCheon reflect the values of their creators but also are instrumental for self-cultivation by subtly programming our ways of living, acting, feeling, and perceiving. And when the human body is represented on screen, as it is in ki suryŏn DVDs, then this programming intensifies.

Since the late 1980's a current or denomination that is often referred to as Traditional Islam has crystallised within the broader landscape of Sunni Islam in the English-speaking world. This analysis sheds light on Traditional Islam's discourses of orthodoxy and orthopraxis, its historical narratives, rhetoric regarding contemporary Islam and how it construes the metastructure of Islam and the Islamic sciences. It is mainly based on essays by Nuh Ha Mim KELLER and Abdul Hakim MURAD and carves out an overview of contemporary Traditional Islam and its central fields of discourse and scholarly contention. Contemporary Traditional Islam's understanding of Islam is established by reference to the famous ḥadīṯ Jibrīl that speaks of a tripartite structure of the religion consisting of islām, īmān and iḥsān. Through the specification of each of these subfields of revealed knowledge Traditional Islamic discourse instructs its adherents regarding the nature of orthodoxy and its understanding of the Islamic past, present and future. Traditional Islam's discursive bid for orthodoxy challenges other strands and conceptualisations of normative Islam, not least those predominant within groups and currents associated within salafism, revivalism and reformism.