Playing with our Expectation!

I find myself again at the point in the module where everything becomes topsy-turvy! For me each module is a roller-coaster of learning, and emotions, at the centre of the roller-coaster is a perpetual loop-the-loop. When I find myself here, my first reaction is mild confusion, building through queasiness to wild panic. However, I have learnt through the last two modules, when I begin this cycle to return to reading... Holistically it guides me, not out of the loop, but instead lets me experience the highs and lows of the cycle with my eyes open. Each new loop helping me to discover and reassess what I am experiencing and understanding.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend last Sunday's Skype discussion, so I have spent the week reading, with interest, all your posts and ideas about expectations. My research centres around the experience of 'play'. Through Heidegger and Gadamer I have come to understand that knowledge is gained through the play of our 'prejudgements' (expectations) and our new experiences (texts). 

As we encounter new ideas and experiences, we anticipate our future understanding of that experience. This anticipation is based on what we already know and understand, generated through the experiences we have already had. The new experience (text) will either substantiate or challenge our expected understanding. The former will help us to develop our original understanding and the latter will initiate a process of adaptation leading to new understanding and perspectives. Without our expectations or 'prejudices' we would be like a white-board wiped clean after each experience.

When we choose to engage with a text (experience) we bring our prejudgments/expectations/prejudices into 'play' with the new experience. We willingly decide to risk what we understand by opening it up and exposing it to 'otherness'. It is the play between the new and our anticipated understanding, that creates an in-between experience, which guides the process of understanding.

Each module asks us to engage with our 'prejudgements' and bring them into play with new ideas introduced to us on this MA - Ideas from philosophy, from our tutors, from our peers and from our lived experiences. By choosing to be here, we have put ourselves 'in the game.'

As with all play it is important to take the game seriously, in so doing, we can fully immerse ourselves in play - Gadamer states only through complete immersion in play can we create a state 'of being outside oneself' a state which creates 'the positive possibility of being wholly with someone else'. For me the key word in this quote is 'with' - play allows us to participate in a shared experience 'with' others. Understanding develops from new experience/text 'with' our original prejudgment/expectations. The knowledge is created between these two states, one does not limit or surpass the other.

My research inquiry has been built out of my expectations - I am now at the in-between stage, my job is to analyse the experience of my inquiry and the data collected 'with' my expectations. I must be open to the play between all the ideas emerging. Some will substantiate the concepts that led me to be interested in my line of inquiry, and others will challenge what I anticipated to understand. Being open to both is the most important rule to 'the game'

Gadamer H G: Truth and Method. Translated by Weinsheimer & Marshall. 2nd revised edition. New York: Continuum 2000

Heidegger M Being an Time. Translated by Macquarrie & Robinson. New York, Harper & Row Publishers, 1962