Hell, books

Trying to read bell hooks essays during the prep periods and lunches, with the kids jumping over desks during math and knocking down chairs at the end of the day, it makes you suspect that theory is essentially conservative, insofar as it seeks the truth, however liberal-critical it may present in its expressions and interpretation of that seeking. An activity of the soul, of the body in safety and the mind at leisure, insofar as it’s seeking the order of things, likes a certain amount of order in its surroundings--cosmological in the root sense, a beautiful measure. And so if teaching and intellectual conversation is still inherently personal and political, it might bear some closer examination just what the nuances of that personality and political standpoint reveal of themselves. Anyone who prefers the term praxis to the impatience to be doing something is most likely an old soul. And as the last election showed, as the old go, so goes the country.