Knowing, Knowing, Known

"Objective", "analytic," and "experimental' - three words, without which I think the western academy would be virtually speechless.

- Parker Palmer's "Violence of Our Knowledge"

Kitchen Stories embodied these three words right up until the thirty-sixth minute of the film when Isak shares a cup of coffee with Folke (which actually means 'people') Nilsson. This small gesture is the first of many that jeopardize the Swedish research study of which Isak is a subject.

Kitchen Stories shows us the flaws within the positivist and experimental research paradigms. The "gold standard" in research methodology stands firm on the precepts of keeping the "studied" at arm's length or in the case of Folke Nilsson, up in a chair at ceiling's height actually looking down on the activity of Isak. One can only imagine that tension felt by both Folke and Isak at the onset of the research study. This tension is at the heart of the positivist paradigm, but clearly, it is useless. From almost the beginning, Isak renders useless the study of single mens' kitchen habits by beginning to cook in his upstairs bedroom, leaving Folke alone in his chair in the dark. One can almost imagine that Isak's nature has been violated as Palmer (1999) talks about, and therefore the knowledge that the socialist Swedish group seeks to find is "violent" (p.3). 

Applying the lens of Parker Palmer's The Violence of Our Knowledge to the film allowed me to give meaning to and explain the resulting actions that developed the plot of Kitchen Stories. Palmer (1999) says that "there is something powerful about the spiritual understanding that we are not only seeking truth, but truth is seeking us" (p.16). While at first comical to me, I think this idea is reflected in the film when Isak drills a hole in the floor so that he can look down on Folke in the chair, and also when he adds in his own drawing in the field notes when Folke is ill. This shows our desire as humans to know truth about things, and have the truth known about us. 

Palmer (1999) goes on to say that "objectivism allows us always to be the changers and never the changed"(p.17). Folke embodies this notion until he and Isak begin to develop a relationship. Through the sharing of coffee and blankets, Isak picking up cigarettes for Folke, and eventually even bathing in Folke's presence, the two dispel the merits of cold, objective research. It is clear that Folke Nilsson has been "changed" when, in the ultimate symbolic act, he removes from his car the camper supplied to him by the Swedish research group, leaves it on the side of the road, and turns his car back in the direction of Isak's home while "Dr." Malmberg loudly protests and threatens his blacklisting!

This reflection on both the film and Parker Palmer's paper would be a sham without my own commentary on how it relates to my own paradigmatic thinking. As a self-proclaimed paradigm chameleon, both the film and paper spoke to my "want to connect back into community" (Palmer, 1999, p. 12). Like the young people Palmer talks about, in this day and age of narcissistic social media and television, I long to know the "truth" about people and connect it with my own truth. To  answer the question about education being an intervention, I see that it can certainly be one - and that it can affect both young and old in drastically harmful and helpful ways. It is my personal goal as fist, a human, and secondly, an educator, to connect what I know and what I am learning in real, meaningful ways that has a positive (not positivist!) impact on the lives of others and myself.

References

Hamer, B. Kitchen Stories (2003) film

Palmer, P.J. (1999) The Violence of Our Knowledge: Toward a Spirituality of Higher Education.

     The Michael Keenan Memorial Lecture, Berea College, Kentucky. The Seventh Lecture 1993