Finding Solidarity with/in/through CPR

Abstract

As the opening chapter to Part III, this piece emphasizes the importance of community and solidarity in Critical Praxis Research. The author encourages her readers to seek out like-minded others to help stave off the insecurity that can dampen the spirits of CPResearchers. She emphasizes the need to both root ourselves and cast our work into the world as we celebrate Self and life in our research.

The dream I had last night was strange, interesting, illuminating. I was with Shirley and others, people I felt I knew somehow but didn’t actually know. We were at a cabin, which I assume, in this dream world, was a place of residence that belonged to Joe and Shirley. It was (somehow) a bright place that was also hidden from the world, an underground oasis where sunlight penetrated through cracks and holes in the ceiling. It was a place I didn’t want to leave. The décor was dated, modest, earthy, but warm and comfortable. There was a canopy of leaves outside the windows, and inside, oddly enough, there were gardens. There were hostas (or something like them), green and purple, leafy, similar to the potted plant growing in my living room. They filled the flowerbeds that wound around the perimeter of the rooms, and they seemed to somehow have taken root on the stone walls of the cabin. It was odd the way they were growing. Hostas usually multiply underground with tough roots like rhizomes. You can split them and transplant them. And as I thought this, Shirley dug out a few plants, wrapped soil around them in plastic bags, and set them by the flowerbed where they waited for me to take them home. The hostas that had taken root on the walls defied this logic—it appeared as if seeds had been scattered into the wind, and they took root between the stones. My mind shifted to the lamb’s ear that carpeted my flowerbeds in New York: silver leaves, velvety to the touch, but prolific, stubborn, and robust. Their roots cling tightly to the earth as they spread underground, and their flower stalks burst upward like fists in the air, eventually, casting their seeds into the wind like confetti. And I realize now, this is how I understand the world of critical pedagogy (Journal Reflection, November 2010).