Chalk Talk #3: Homes and Coalitions
Here are the results from the last Chalk Talk and the essay posted. I was very disappointed to see the lack of engagement and the censorship occurring on this last posting.
Where do you find home?
How will you find coalition?
When I ask the question, “Is Bennington an echo chamber?” the concept of an echo chamber must first be defined. From a philosophical perspective, an echo chamber is different from what philosopher C. Thi Nguyen calls an “epistemic bubble”. An epistemic bubble is a knowledge network without many voices of disagreement or difference. This is also a quality of echo chambers, but unlike an echo chamber, an epistemic bubble can be popped by introducing omitted or minority views. Bennington may simply be an epistemic bubble because a specific kind of student is attracted to a progressive liberal arts college like us.
An echo chamber, by contrast, silences and actively discredits contrary opinions; “non-members are not simply omitted or not heard, but are actively assigned some epistemic demerit, such as unreliability, epistemic maliciousness, or dishonesty” (146). Exposure to outside disagreement will often make insiders retreat further into the echo chamber because it is a place of safety and agreement. An epistemic bubble is unintentional; an echo chamber intentionally creates a hostile space to outsiders and dissenters. Members of an epistemic bubble are still open to learning from outsiders, while the members of an echo chamber cannot learn anything new.
This idea of echo chambers/epistemic bubbles is related to the idea of home spaces/coalition spaces, because exclusion is a concern for both. The feminist and civil rights activist Bernice Johnson Reagon wrote extensively about coalition building, and identified “home spaces” as an obstacle to effective coalitions. A home space is where you find safety with people just like you, but Reagon says that there’s no way you can survive by staying inside that ‘barred room’—inside that bubble. To change things you need to build coalitions and recognize that they can be dangerous spaces where your views will be challenged. Reagon writes, “Some people will come to a coalition and they rate the success of the coalition on whether or not they feel good when they get there. They’re not looking for coalition; they’re looking for a home!”(359). Reagon sees the importance of both homes and coalitions, but she warns us of confusing them. Both are spaces we must temporarily exist in, but when we try to make the home space permanent it becomes an echo chamber. Colleges must balance the demands of being a home space while also being a place for encountering new ideas—we should all feel safe existing here, but we must also challenge ourselves to build coalitions. Otherwise, we will learn and change nothing.