on transparency and identity

Many years ago I was inspired by the story of the Emperor's new clothes. I've revisited the story numerous times from different angles, arguing, for example, that nudity can be construed as fashion, or that the story would have been more poignant had the emperor and his tailors held their ground and continued to insist that the clothes are made of weapons of mass destruction, er... I mean made of "democracy" -- and the only reason you can't see it is because you're not refined enough (and, of course it'll look different than ours). [oops, I went off on a tangent].

Getting back to transparency, yesterday in a talk on "Balancing Academia and the Rest of Life" panelists spoke on how difficult it was to do, but of course it's possible, and can even be easy. One panelist said [paraphrased here] "No. Not with young children. There is, for me, no sense of 'balance'. It would be an absurd lie for me to tell you there was. I'm not even good at faking it."

Echoes of the little boy. The crowd, very confused and stressed out because they came feeling unbalanced, and were just told to persevere and they'll make it, and they were thinking "I'm failing. I'm swimming as hard as I can, and I can't persevere any more. I'm a failure." and then they heard: "I'm off balance too" -- and, I swear to you, there were tears -- literal tears-- of relief.

How much of academia is about "show"? How much about "success" in this study or that, in these implications or those. We strive to "prove" through "rigorous scientifically-based" studies one thing or another, and we are taught (impicitly or explicitly) to never flinch. Never let them see you sweat. Because if you are weak, if you show any sense of doubt, then your work is suspect. If your work is suspect, then your worth is suspect. There is *no* room for error. Lives are at stake.

How much crap. This is (in my laughably humble, but strongly contended opinion) a major problem in academics. We take ourselves too seriously. We do not allow for mistakes. And this gets filtered down to grad school, and to undergrad, and to K-12, and permeates throughout our entire learning lives.

We need to be okay with questioning the emperor, and ourselves -- in public. I put together a presentation on embodiment based on an initial foray into the field, using terms that I was struggling to understand. I'd make a different one now (even a week later), but at the time it seemed "about right" (even as I built in disclaimers of broad generalizations). If I made one now, I'm almost 100% certain that I would consider it wrong in a month. Should I apologize for it? No. Should I be embarrassed by it? No. Should I defend it as absolute truth? No. Should I defend it as a perfectly fine exploration? Absolutely. I purposefully made the above presentation a bit outlandish ("provocative" is the term Gloria Ladson-Billings used to describe my concept of discourse bending, and I think it fits with my intention here too), and got reamed on it (mentioned here: embodiment vs. experience), but that's okay. I learned his perspective. And had I "hidden" my thoughts on embodiment because I feared others might think I'm an idiot, I'd have not learned his perspective, and we'd all sit around watching the parade, commenting on how snazzy the emperor looks.

I'm mostly naked. We all are. Get used to it.