The other day, I stumbled across a blog post by Jeffrey Keefer, Why I am no longer a Critical Theorist. Now, I only have passing knowledge of critical theory or actor-network theory, which he goes on to talk about, so my reactions may make a lot of sense.

In his post, he writes:

However, people are so complicated and networks create, hold together, and modify with forces beyond just the human actors (cf. actor-network theory) that is it difficult to speak for the whole as if there is a unified whole.

My mind wanders to a couple different thoughts here. On the one hand, I think about the transcendent, the mystical, that which passes human understanding. How, if at all, does this fit into of critical theory or actor-network theory?

My thoughts also go to my interest in the relationship between group relations, group analytics, and artificial neural networks. The network is more than just the nodes. The group has reactions above and beyond must the members of the group.

Jeffrey starts off referencing Maha Bali’s blog post, Embracing Paradox: Both/And Mentality and Postmodernism. At the top of the blog post, she suggest a three minute reading time. Then, she links to “Matt Croslin’s blogpost on metamodernism and heutagogy”. My thoughts wander off to metamodernism and how it relates to modernism and postmodernism, another area, I could spend a lot of time exploring.

Oops. My three minutes is up, and I haven’t even gotten to her link to “Martin Weller’s post on the role personality plays in MOOCs” or Lee Skallerup Bessette post about “social media activity as service”.

So, I back my way out and am back with Jeffrey as he references Lyotard. It seems like just digging through all that underlies these few blog posts could give me plenty to study for a long time.

Meanwhile, the link to my previous blog post in Facebook group brought a lot of comments. Some of it was around the conflict of colleges and universities as degree granting organizations and learning institutions. That is an old discussion that I find tedious. However, I did get the discussion back on track about the subject matter, which I’m still not sure how best to describe. Currently, I saying something like Metamodernism and Sacred Aesthetics. One link that looked promising was The Modern and the Postmodern (Part 1) and Part 2. Part 2 is the part that sounds most interesting to me, but I might do both of them.

Others suggested, “Douglas Crimp at University of Rochester and Yvonne Rainer at UC Irvine” and “Athabasca University in the MAIS program Master of Arts integrated studies and see what they say. See if you can talk to Wendell Kisner”

So, there are plenty of things to explore, on top of the poems to read, plays to see, folk music to listen to, and my greater spiritual quest.

Buen Camino.