This week, we started our discussion of Letting Go?: Sharing Historical Authority in a User-Generated World, and rather than talking about each one of a set of authors, we had a fairly free-form conversation that tied together a lot of loose threads. (My notes from Wednesday night involve a great many arrows.)
A high point for all of us was Bill Adair's interview with Matthew Fisher (p.44), who discussed his work on the 21st Century Abe and Franklin Remixed exhibits. In particular, we appreciated Fisher's citing Hein, Duchamp, Freire, and Lindauer in his argument for "a respectful back and forth" between specialists and public contributors. While Fisher contends that the transformative power of collaborative programming lies in "empowering audiences" (p. 49), he also argues that experts serve the important need for scaffolding when it comes to complicated content, theory, and context.
The focus of Fisher's comments is on the positive aspects of translating historical practice to shared online spaces, but we also found this interview a useful springboard to discussing the relationship between expertise and authority. We discussed a lot of disparate ideas throughout the evening, but we kept coming back to the apparent tension between various authors and a generalized cadre of "experts." McLean, for example, refers to the "novice-expert construct" (p. 70), which is indeed akin to what Freire would call "the 'banking' concept of education." To her credit, she also contends that "We need to embrace the contributions of expert knowledge and at the same time expand our definitions of 'expert' and 'expertise' to include broader domains of experience" (p. 71), and other authors throughout the book so far make similar claims. Still, what made Fisher's argument stand out for us was a clear, succinct discussion of this issue with references to his own theoretical lineage--not in service of his own expert authority, but with an eye toward giving context for broader structures of authority and the tools for dismantling them.
We closed the evening with some discussion of Benjamin Filene and Open House: If These Walls Could Talk. I've decided to save our thoughts on that until we get to the other elements of that section, so I'd encourage everyone to keep thinking about it and explore the website a bit. For next week, we'll finish Letting Go? and discuss our plans for the next few months. Til then, happy (and critical) reading!
DH
A high point for all of us was Bill Adair's interview with Matthew Fisher (p.44), who discussed his work on the 21st Century Abe and Franklin Remixed exhibits. In particular, we appreciated Fisher's citing Hein, Duchamp, Freire, and Lindauer in his argument for "a respectful back and forth" between specialists and public contributors. While Fisher contends that the transformative power of collaborative programming lies in "empowering audiences" (p. 49), he also argues that experts serve the important need for scaffolding when it comes to complicated content, theory, and context.
The focus of Fisher's comments is on the positive aspects of translating historical practice to shared online spaces, but we also found this interview a useful springboard to discussing the relationship between expertise and authority. We discussed a lot of disparate ideas throughout the evening, but we kept coming back to the apparent tension between various authors and a generalized cadre of "experts." McLean, for example, refers to the "novice-expert construct" (p. 70), which is indeed akin to what Freire would call "the 'banking' concept of education." To her credit, she also contends that "We need to embrace the contributions of expert knowledge and at the same time expand our definitions of 'expert' and 'expertise' to include broader domains of experience" (p. 71), and other authors throughout the book so far make similar claims. Still, what made Fisher's argument stand out for us was a clear, succinct discussion of this issue with references to his own theoretical lineage--not in service of his own expert authority, but with an eye toward giving context for broader structures of authority and the tools for dismantling them.
We closed the evening with some discussion of Benjamin Filene and Open House: If These Walls Could Talk. I've decided to save our thoughts on that until we get to the other elements of that section, so I'd encourage everyone to keep thinking about it and explore the website a bit. For next week, we'll finish Letting Go? and discuss our plans for the next few months. Til then, happy (and critical) reading!
DH
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