2025-06-07_G Spivak on limits

“Once we have established the story of the straight, white, Judeo-Christian, heterosexual man of property as the ethical universal, we must not replicate the same trajectory. I think we certainly have to watch it, but it is not possible … . We are … we have limits, we cannot even learn many languages. This idea of a global fun-fair is a lousy idea as a teaching idea. One of the first things to do is to think through the limits of one’s power. One must ruthlessly undermine that story that I was talking of, the story of the ethical universal, the hero. But the alternative is not constantly to evoke multiplicity; the alternative is to know and to teach the student the awareness that this is a limited sample because of one’s own inclinations and capacities to learn enough to take a larger sample. And this kind of work should be a collective enterprise. Other people will do some other work.”

“This is how I think one should proceed, rather than make each student into a ground of multiplicity. That leads to a pluralism. And I see so often in the U.S. student - we were talking about this miraculating agent - I ask the U.S. student: ’’What do you think is the inscription that allows you to think the world without any preparation? What sort of coding has produced this subject?” I think it’s hard for students to know this, but we have a responsibility to make this lesson palliative rather than fully destructive. This is not a paralysing thing to teach. In fact, when a student is told that responsibility means proceeding from an awareness of the limits of one’s power, the student understands it quite differently from being told “Look, you can’t do all of this.” You know what I’m saying? I can’t do all of this. But I will share with you what I have learned about knowing, that these are the limitations of what I undertake, looking to others to teach me. I think that’s what one should do rather than invoke multiplicity. ”

• In a Word interview, pg. 147-148