At one level, the cells in Cook & Brown’s 2x2 matrix may be seen as a map of cultural (and emotional) *institutions*; and in that perspective, the dance then takes the form of cultural-political *struggles* - to pull and hold action and resources in one or other institutional space.
In this view, the ‘conceptualising’ cell can be seen as the institutional space of *collectivism, scientism and technical rationality*, with its pull to make only ‘scientific’ (formalised) knowledges and ‘scientifically rigorous’ courses of action legitimate.
‘Storytelling’ becomes the institutional space of *‘commonsense’*, with its tendency to render the familiar, commonplace, remembered, vernacular, frequently spoken-of and easily speakable (gossip, hearsay, legend, foundation myth, common-sense, ‘what everybody knows’) as the only legitimate repertoire for accounting for what occurs and exists in the world. Religion contains a lot of this, as does over-the-fence and round-the-water-cooler chat; so does politics, notably, today’s populism. ‘Skill’ - in this reductive, defensive, combative space of institution versus institution - is the unreflective, inarticulate (perhaps inexpressibly mysterious) world of *body performers* (for example, athletes, perhaps also, actors) and *intuitive, visionary ’makers’*: mythologised craftspeople and artists. And ‘genre’ is the space of *tradition*: conservative, tribal even - *This is what we do here, these are the legitimate actions, this is what counts as competence, this is proper behaviour, this is how to belong; and these others and their actions . . . these are aliens or infidels.*
And then, in a space of this embattled, rigidified, combative kind . . . the generative dance is *liberation*: the continual cross-breeding and re-making of institutions, disciplined, critically reflective research and development both ‘in-here’ in the heart-mind and ‘out-there’ in organised society; deepening mixed-mode literacy, continually enlarging cultural and emotional landscape; and capacity for being-at-home and making a way - well - in the world as it in fact is for any person and community.
In skilfully discovering the performing of ‘the dance of knowing’ - the manifold skills, genres, stories and technical-analytical frames of *this* field of diverse practice - institutional space is liberated and occupied and made mobilisable, for marginalised, illegitimate, disenfranchised communities of practice, for the production of freedom in future and for every actual person: for the altered production of culture and material order.
This is a vision, not a statement of actuality. We can return to this in considering ‘good’ and ‘bad’ skilfulness. Bad skill
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