Writing Remix Ep.108: Note From Dan & Reflection Questions
Ep.108: Exploring Civility, Discourse, & Hope w/ Dr. Danielle Lee
Listen to Ep.108: Exploring Civility, Discourse, & Hope w/ Dr. Danielle Lee
When we’re talking about love, we’re talking about hope, and we’re talking about decolonizing education.”
-Dr. Danielle Lee
Love is such an absent part of the education journey. Last semester I started teaching All About Love by bell hooks and it was a huge hit in my classroom. The idea that I was going to be talking about love with students in an “academic” environment was a daunting experience. I had to really tell myself it’s okay to do that, it’s okay to make space to talk about love, to discuss the practice of love, to understand that it is a practice and that it’s not a given in our society. We have to understand and learn what love is and how love works.
In this podcast episode with Danielle Lee I was so stunned by how much we talked about love as a practice, how much we talked about love as this missing part of civil discourse, and how it doesn’t necessarily exist the way we might’ve remembered it used to, and at the same time we asked ourselves if there’s a way to get back to civil discourse.
I’m teaching All About Love again this semester and I’m looking forward to actually getting to that book. I think it’s so important to be talking about that in today’s world where love is absent from so many aspects of your lives. It’s absent from our family structures, it’s absent from how we speak to one another and how we see one another, love is absent from the workforce, love is absent from our country and our politics, love is absent from our discourse with other countries, love is absent from our mundane everyday interactions with people that we see on the street; we don’t practice love with each other. We don’t practice love for ourselves, which means we are living in a dehumanized understanding of self.
To talk about love, to teach love means exactly what Danielle Lee said, it means we’re talking about decolonizing education. We can even take it a step further to mean we are decolonizing ourselves.
Later on in the episode Danielle says this other thing that truly just hit so hard. She said “Civility is about learning.” Our whole episode was rooted in this idea of “civil” discourse and what is civility. I don’t know if we even came to a conclusion because I don’t know if we can. I think these things actually change over time and I think Danielle and I realized that truth in this episode. Yet, the one thing that I keep coming back to in terms of civility is the imperative role of love because it activates a knowledge of self, and a deep knowledge of yourself is a deep knowledge of each other and this culminates into a deep knowledge of community. It’s what we are searching for, right now.
I’m hoping to create this deep community with this podcast, in my classrooms, in my home with my family and my friends, and with the larger community here at USC, in LA, back home in New York, and wherever I am. It’s the challenge I pose for myself.
I want to thank everyone for listening to this episode for truly engaging with Writing Remix. I want to thank Danielle Lee for coming on and talking with me. It’s always fun and always a learning experience. I encourage you all to share this experience with your friends, family, please share it with your students if you’re teachers, and share your thoughts and feedback.
Episode 108 Reflective Questions
This week’s Reflective Questions ask us to consider what is civility?
For 10 minutes, write as much as you can thinking about the challenges of civility. These can be personal challenges, external challenges, etc. The idea is know that there are challenges.
Write about a time that you experienced true (you get to define the idea of “true”) civil discourse. What made it civil?
Write every way you practice love of self, love of others, love of home (you decide what “home” is), love of community, etc. Do you choose to eliminate people or places etc., from that practice? If so why. If not why?
Share your writing with me at writingremixpodcast@gmail.com, or post your thoughts on Instagram and tag the podcast @WritingRemixPod, and I’d love to read them on the next episode!
Listen to Episode 108 & hit the like, restack, & share!
Ep.108: Exploring Civility, Discourse, & Hope w/ Dr. Danielle Lee
Dan welcomed back Dr. Danielle Lee to Writing Remix last year for the fifth annual Big Rhetorical Podcast Carnival, which was focused on ‘Politics and Rhetorics, Navigating Civility, Culture, and Crisis.’ Their conversation went deep into the need for a civility in the current political landscape, how the lack of civility is escalating dehumanization fr…