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Through concepts such as clinamen, tesserae, kenosis, askesis, and “opening the mouths of the dead,” the work explores revision, responsiveness, and the ethical need to keep learning alive despite uncertainty.",{"@graph":14,"@context":73},[15,34,56],{"@type":16,"itemListElement":17},"BreadcrumbList",[18,23,27,31],{"item":19,"name":20,"@type":21,"position":22},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",1,{"item":24,"name":25,"@type":21,"position":26},"https://docshare.wps.com/template/","Template",2,{"item":28,"name":29,"@type":21,"position":30},"https://docshare.wps.com/template/presentations/","Presentations",3,{"item":32,"name":10,"@type":21,"position":33},"https://docshare.wps.com/template/tears-run-down-heavens-gaunt-face/175028/",4,{"url":32,"name":10,"@type":35,"image":36,"author":41,"headline":10,"publisher":44,"fileFormat":47,"inLanguage":8,"description":12,"dateModified":48,"datePublished":49,"encodingFormat":47,"isAccessibleForFree":50,"interactionStatistic":51},"DigitalDocument",{"url":37,"@type":38,"width":39,"height":40},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/tears-run-down-heavens-gaunt-face/175028.png","ImageObject",442,249,{"name":42,"@type":43},"Aria Callaghan","Person",{"url":19,"name":45,"@type":46},"DocShare","Organization","application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document","2026-10-19","2026-09-02",true,{"@type":52,"interactionType":53,"userInteractionCount":55},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":54},"ViewAction",7,{"@type":57,"mainEntity":58},"FAQPage",[59,65,69],{"name":60,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":62},"What central educational problem does the text foreground?","Question",{"text":63,"@type":64},"The text focuses on how teaching can become tangled in speakers’ self-involvement and academic language, producing failure in communication and diminishing students into numb attention.","Answer",{"name":66,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":67},"How does the author connect hermeneutics to pedagogy?",{"text":68,"@type":64},"Hermeneutics is treated as dependent on the possibility that another person may be right, which enables learning to revise what seemed settled and keep interpretation genuinely open.",{"name":70,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":71},"What role do ideas like clinamen and kenosis play in the argument?",{"text":72,"@type":64},"They function as conceptual resources for describing revision, swerve, and reconfiguration of meaning, opposing fixed categories and supporting renewed interpretation in changing circumstances.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":32,"og:type":75,"og:title":10,"og:site_name":45,"og:description":12},"article",{"robots":77,"canonical":32},"index,follow",{"doc_id":79,"site_id":7},175028,1791746406,{"code":4,"msg":82,"data":83},"success",[84,88,93,98,103,108,113,118,123],{"id":85,"doc_module":22,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":29,"show_sort_weight":86,"slug":87},11,90,"presentations",{"id":89,"doc_module":22,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":90,"show_sort_weight":91,"slug":92},12,"Resumes",80,"resumes",{"id":94,"doc_module":22,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":95,"show_sort_weight":96,"slug":97},14,"Invoices",70,"invoices",{"id":99,"doc_module":22,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":100,"show_sort_weight":101,"slug":102},15,"Posters",60,"posters",{"id":104,"doc_module":22,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":105,"show_sort_weight":106,"slug":107},16,"Social Media",50,"social-media",{"id":109,"doc_module":22,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":110,"show_sort_weight":111,"slug":112},17,"Forms",40,"forms",{"id":114,"doc_module":22,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":115,"show_sort_weight":116,"slug":117},18,"Letters",30,"letters",{"id":119,"doc_module":22,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":120,"show_sort_weight":121,"slug":122},21,"Paper Templates",5,"papers-templates",{"id":124,"doc_module":22,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":125,"show_sort_weight":4,"slug":126},158,"General","general-158",{"code":4,"msg":82,"data":128},{"doc_id":79,"user_id":129,"nickname":42,"user_avatar":130,"doc_module":22,"category_id":85,"category_name":29,"doc_title":10,"doc_description":12,"doc_content":131,"file_id":132,"file_url":133,"file_type":134,"file_size":135,"view_count":55,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":22,"is_downloadable":22,"audit_status":22,"page_count":136,"language":137,"language_code":8,"site_id":7,"html_lang":8,"table_of_contents":138,"faqs":139,"seo_title":140,"seo_description":12,"update_tm":141,"read_time":142},962084926284,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_29158cc5080c5b710cf443261637dec0","“TEARS RUN DOWN HEAVEN’S GAUNT FACE”\nDavid W. Jardine\nUniversity of Calgary\njardine@ucalgary.ca\nWe are always educating for a world that is or is becoming out of joint, for this is the basic human situation, in which the world is created by mortal hands to serve mortals for a limited time as home. Because the world is made by mortals it wears out; and because it continuously changes its inhabitants it runs the risk of becoming as mortal as they. To preserve the world against the mortality of its creators and inhabitants it must be constantly set right anew. The problem is simply to educate in such a way that a setting-right remains actually possible, even though it can, of course, never be assured. (Arendt, 1969, p. 192)\nPreamble\nFirst, a very brief confession. I read over the following lovely, cascading, funny, painfully familiar passage quickly on first reading, laughing, commiserating from certainly having stood on both sides of that lectern. It is from David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest (2006) and seems to be tossed off as a vivid, well-read joke and then left behind:\nThese academics' arguments seem sound as far as they go, but they do not explain the incredible pathos of Paul Anthony Heaven reading his lecture to a crowd of dead-eyed kids picking at themselves and drawing vacant airplane- and genitalia-doodles on their college-rule note-pads, reading stupefyingly turgid-sounding shit -- 'For while clinamen and tessera strive to revive or revise the dead ancestor, and while kenosis and demonization act to repress consciousness and memory of the dead ancestor, it is, finally, artistic askesis which represents the contest proper, the battle-to-the-death with the loved dead' -- in a monotone as narcotizing as a voice from the grave -- and yet all the time weeping, Paul Anthony Heaven, as an upward hall full of kids all scan their mail . . . silently weeping, very steadily, so that tears run down Heaven's gaunt face. (p. 911)\nThere are countless examples like this in Infinite Jest of great elaborations, meticulous, detailed, sometimes even nauseating scenarios.\nThis one hit close to home with its scene of professors smothered in their own words and overcome by their own sentiments, and students numbed by what might as well be a \"voice from the grave.\"\nBut it is also about pedagogy, its conduct and its failures, not only in what Paul Anthony Heaven is trying to speak about, but in the very scenario of his self-involved failure, at that very moment, of exactly the same thing.\nThe Original Plan: To See if Heaven Has a Point\nWhat might happen if I didn’t pick at myself while reading this passage, didn't just laugh and moan and feel very slightly humiliated but, instead delved a bit to see if Heaven has a point? After all, “the possibility that the other person may be right is the soul of hermeneutics” (H.G. Gadamer, July 9, 1989, cited in Grondin, 1994, p. 124).\nClinamen, tesserae, demonization, kenosis, askesis. That list alone is enough to set an old scholar’s mouth to watering. Just imagine the circuses of images: patterned mosaic pieces (tessera) like shells picked up on a beach that remind me of them fitting in somewhere, or broken-heart necklaces that memorialize their belonging together; the clinamen-like “swerve of events” (Rai, 2008, n.p.), “an ancient ‘shiver’ sent up the new spine, a clinamen or turbulence” (Kunze, 2018, p. 38), of happenstances that can have a “generative capacity” (p. 48).\nThe cold and morbid imposition of what is settled beyond question. The interruptions of what seemed settled. Imps, tricksters, Coyotes, Hermes, the young child’s innocent question, animal spirits, the death of someone that rattles the roof. Daimons (Hillman, 1983, p. 54-5) everywhere you look – Raven’s head crooked at the feeder, watching, animal energy, signs, messages, familiars on the backs of brooms. Ecological myriads of lives and living and voices and myriad stories and energies, versus heavenly dreams of the One self-emptie","cbCaispIffTULlRn","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaispIffTULlRn","docx",58314,26,"English","# Preamble\n# The Original Plan: To See if Heaven Has a Point\n## Hermeneutic possibility and interpretive revision\n## Symbolic elaborations and images of the dead","[{\"question\":\"What central educational problem does the text foreground?\",\"answer\":\"The text focuses on how teaching can become tangled in speakers’ self-involvement and academic language, producing failure in communication and diminishing students into numb attention.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the author connect hermeneutics to pedagogy?\",\"answer\":\"Hermeneutics is treated as dependent on the possibility that another person may be right, which enables learning to revise what seemed settled and keep interpretation genuinely open.\"},{\"question\":\"What role do ideas like clinamen and kenosis play in the argument?\",\"answer\":\"They function as conceptual resources for describing revision, swerve, and reconfiguration of meaning, opposing fixed categories and supporting renewed interpretation in changing circumstances.\"}]","Tears Run Down Heaven’s Gaunt Face | DOCX",1788317926,9]