Can we agree on one thing before we start? That we all live in contradictions.

It is something we have to bracket out from time to time—like making the statement, “I’m more than anything that can define me,” while the statement itself becomes what defines us. In other words, the intended message contradicts how it is delivered in an absolute way.

Yet when we open up to contradictions, the act makes them transcend. One who comes to see the difference between meaning intended for infinity and meaning falling within finitude implicitly grasps the negative that unifies the two — a developmental movement toward a more expanded understanding of infinity in its grounding place.

In “academia” — and by academia I mean the living space people endorse and accordingly identify themselves as part of — I experience far less opening up than bracketing out / rejecting / avoiding when facing these contradictions.

When…

• A theory stays stuck in a place where its enabling process is conditioned by certain contradictions.

• A positionality statement acknowledges the contradictory elements in its content, but not what structures the contradictions in providing such a statement.

• A methodological claim is applied to the people, communities, and (sub)cultures being studied, but not to the people, communities, and (sub)cultures studying them.

In this dialogical place, it’s my commitment to experiencing self-formative knowing with you, which is what I address when writing about theories, methodologies, and concepts.

As self-formative knowing is intersubjectivity-grounded knowing, knowing as being, and emancipation-oriented… (These are put in small letters intentionally so that we don’t need to be bothered by the words for now.)